Foreword

Abstract

This special issue contains selected papers of Plenary and Keynote Lectures presented at the Tenth National Congress of the Australian Institute of Physics, held at the University of Melbourne from 10 to 14 February, 1992. The Congress was attended by nearly 1000 delegates, including numerous distinguished physici~ts from Australia and abroad, who were treated to a smorgasbord of physics ranging from astrophysics to particle physics. The Congress was organised around a series of fifteen separate sections, representing various branches of physics in which there is active Australian interest, and incorporated the First Conference of the Vacuum Society of Australia; the Fifth Gaseous Electronics Meeting; the Fourteenth AINSE Nuclear and Particle Physics Conference; the 1992 Physics Teachers Conference; the Third Australasian Conference on Remote Sensing of Atmospheres and Oceans; and the South Pacific Solar-Terrestrial and Space Physics Workshop.