News: Research

Mini-EUSO hitched a ride with Russia's Soyuz MS14 to the International Space Station. Mini-EUSO is a prototype for two University of Chicago-led experiments, EUSO-SPB2 and POEMMA, which aim to discover the origin of the highest-energy particles and to study their sources and interactions.

Geophysical Sciences postdoc, Stephanie Olson, suggests that exoplanets with favorable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life than Earth itself. 

Researchers found traces of Iron-60, an extremely rare isotope produced when a star explodes, in Antarctica. Research Prof. Priscilla Frisch weighs in on how this interstellar dust made it's way to Earth.  

A new study by UChicago researchers shakes up the picture of Martian salt—and offers new ways to test what Mars’ water would have looked like. Asst. Prof. Edwin Kite’s team analyzed salt deposits and built models to help determine how and why Mars dried out. 

Prof. Daniel Holz discusses the detection of gravitational waves that may have been from a black hole swallowing a neutron star with Science News Magazine. 

 

Prof. Daniel Holz discusses research on black hole pairing and tripling and explains how this research can help scientists measure the eccentricities of black holes' orbits in the near future.  

Student-driven changes in laboratories at UChicago, including a Shut the Sash program, yield energy and cost savings.

For the past quarter-century, the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory has helped scientists and engineers make groundbreaking discoveries—providing extremely bright X-rays to investigate everything from dinosaur bones and lunar rocks to materials for new solar panels and new pharmaceutical drugs. Now Argonne, which is operated by the University of Chicago, has been cleared to begin building a massive, $815 million upgrade to its kilometer-long X-ray facility. 

Raymond Moellering’s lab reports a new method to identify and interrogate the biophysical properties of tens of thousands of modified proteins simultaneously in live cells. This method, called “Hotspot Thermal Profiling,” therefore enables efficient selection of functionally important modifications for further study, as well as insight into the network of proteins and biomolecules that are interacting with that particular modification site in cells. 

Congratulations to Greg Engel, professor in the Department of Chemistry, Mark Rivers, Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources (CARS), and research professors, Peter Eng and Yanbin Wang, for earning grants from the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Read more about their projects.

Nagel explains how his findings in droplet and bubble experiments affect universality. 

The awarded grant will help Nord, utilize AI to design an experiment optimized to measure the expansion rate of the universe. Nord will also be working with Asst. Prof. Yuxin Chen. 

Assoc Prof. Frabrycky's research group noticed a star's irregular dimming pattern, leading to the discovery and precise measurement of a new exoplanet's mass.