ANSTO expertise highlighted in 3D IMAX film about Angkorian Empire

ANSTO

ANSTO radiocarbon facilities and scientists are featured in a new IMAX documentary film released in the United States.

Angkor 3D: The Lost Empire of Cambodia, a film by Australian director Murray Pope, is now screening at the California Science Centre in Los Angeles with a concurrent exhibition organised in association with the Cambodian government.

Angkor film
The film poster released to promote the IMAX documentary

The film unveils the mysteries behind the Angkorian Empire, its demise, including footage of Dr Quan Hua and the accelerator mass spectrometry facility at the Lucas Heights campus.

Film trailer

Pope came to ANSTO in late 2019/early 2020 and spent several days on-site, as he was featuring the work of scientists at Angkor in the production.

Angkor film crew  with Dr Quan Hua (left) in January 2020
Dr Quan Hua (left), Murray Pope (centre) and Dr Duncan Cook in January 2020

At the time, Dr Hua was a member of a team working on a speleothem from a cave in southern Cambodia to reveal climate change during the medieval period.

Dr Hua has contributed to international collaborative research on Angkor and has taken several field trips to Cambodia.

Radiocarbon dating of the speleothem using accelerator mass spectrometry at ANSTO's Centre for Accelerator Science, in collaboration with Dr Duncan Cook from the Australian Catholic University and Associate Professor Dan Penny from the University of Sydney, has helped to reconstruct climate variability for Cambodia for the last millennium. It covers the entire Angkor period (circa the 9th-15th centuries).

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