News: 2019

Fifteen faculty members across five departments joined the Physical Sciences Division this fall. Read more about their research interests and backgrounds.

The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics is partnering with the University of Chicago Library to run a pilot study to determine how to scan 175,000 photographic glass plate slides from Yerkes Observatory in a way that will facilitate meaningful scientific inquiry.  

Prof. Alex Eskin, a UChicago mathematician who co-proved a “magic wand theorem” has been awarded one of the $3 million Breakthrough Prizes. 

The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, of which the University of Chicago is a partner, received the prize for creating the first image of a black hole earlier this year.  Michael Levin, an associate professor of physics studying quantum condensed matter physics, was also awarded the New Horizons Prize along with three other physicists. 

Asst. Prof. Pedro Lopes reimagines the role of “human” in human-computer interaction. Some of Lopes's projects consider how humans respond to computers being in control of their anatomy.  

Assoc. Prof. Bozhi Tian develops a less invasive pacemaker--silicon cells that could be injected into the heart and operated using pulses of light. 

Prof. David Jablonksi addresses a long-standing biodiversity question: why are there so many species at the equator and so few near the poles? In one study, Jablonski, whose research on mollusks has shaped the field, worked with a UChicago bird biologist to understand how species across the world live in different climates. In the second, Jablonski and postdoc Katie Collins used a micro CT scanner to analyze how forms of mollusks change from tropics to poles. 

This month, PSD researchers have been featured for investigating questions in biodiversity, studying salt deposits on Mars, and discussing online privacy. In case you missed it, review our news headlines from August 2019.

 

Postdoctoral Fellow Stephanie Olson comments on new geological discovery of 'massive pool' of methane and posits that it could have astrobiological significance.

Live Science interviews Madore to weigh in on why researchers produce conflicting results when attempting to measure the rate of cosmic expansion. 

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.  

The University of Chicago has named its Physics Research Center in honor of former faculty member and founding physics department chair Albert A. Michelson, a pioneering scientist who was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences. The 1907 prize honored his field-defining work, including taking the first accurate measurement of the speed of light.