News: Research

UChicago team that built MAROON-X instrument confirm third-nearest star with a planet—and it’s rocky like Earth.
 

Prof. Stephen Stigler retired after over forty years at the University of Chicago. Over his long career, he has investigated the history of the development of mathematics and statistical methods, in relation to problems in many fields—from astronomy to medicine to social sciences and psychology. 

A unique partnership among biologists, chemists and X-ray scientists at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory has zeroed in on several molecules that could be used to create drugs to fight COVID-19.

Chemist Rachael Farber, PhD, the Kadanoff-Rice Postdoctoral Scholar in the Sibener lab, has been featured in Beneath the AVS Surface, a newsletter for the professional society for sciences related to materials, interfaces, and processing.

Astrophysicist and University of Chicago graduate student Abigail Lee is the lead author on a new paper that analyzed observations of light from a nearby galaxy to validate the JAGB method for measuring cosmological distances. This novel technique will allow future independent distance measurements that can help answer one of the biggest outstanding questions in cosmology: how fast is the universe expanding?
 

This month, PSD community members have been featured for their work discovering new metamaterials to improve optics for telescopes, designing patterns in self-propelling liquid crystals, and meauring ceramic chips in meteorites to study the early solar system, and more. In case you missed it, review our news headlines from February 2021.

The University of Chicago Library continues to look to the sky in an ongoing collaboration with Professor Rich Kron, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, exploring the use of data obtained from historical astronomical glass plates to drive new astronomical discovery.

Prof. Guilia Galli, a leader in solar fuels, released a new design to optimize photoelectrodes for producing solar fuels. The research could boost a solar-powered fuel made by splitting water.
 

New research shows that the movement in liquid crystals can be harnessed and directed, a step toward developing autonomous materials that can sense inputs, amplify signals, and even compute information.

Prof. Daniel Holz comments on new recalculation of Cygnus X-1’s mass in New York Times

Yuanyuan Zhang, an astrophysicist with the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, led a study with Dark Energy Survey data of how light from inside galaxy clusters may be linked with dark matter.

Experimental cosmologist and Assoc. Prof. McMahon and his students developed a new metamaterials-based antireflection coating for the silicon lenses used in cameras that capture the oldest light in the universe.

New Scientist filmed an interview with Dan Hooper: What happened at the big bang? The search for dark matter, cosmic inflation, and other mysteries from the beginning of time.

Random twists of place: How quiet is quantum space-time at the Planck scale? Prof. Craig Hogan shares an update on the reconfigured Fermilab Holometer.

Ceramic chips inside meteorites hint at wild days of the early solar system. Using complex equipment in Nicolas Dauphas' Origins Lab, including a one-of-a-kind patented purification system that the team developed, Justin Hu measured the isotopes for eight different elements inside the chips.