News: 2023

June

Infrastructure woes could slow South Pole telescope plans

June 23, 2023

South Pole Telescope lit in pink with navy sky and stars beyond

Astrophysicist John Carlstrom discusses the launch of CMB-S4.

Photography by Keith Vanderlinde 


PSD recognizes four students with a William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship

June 22, 2023

psd logo

The Physical Sciences Division has selected four graduate students to receive a William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year.


Eleven books to read over summer 2023

June 20, 2023

Bozhi Tian

UChicago teaching award winners, including chemist Bozhi Tian, share their selections.

Photo by Jean Lachat


Designing a less toxic method for MXene synthesis

June 20, 2023

Black and white microscopic image of MXenes

Prof. Dmitri Talapin, Doctoral Candidate Di Wang, and Postdoctoral Researcher Chenkun Zhou discuss a new method to synthesize MXenes.

Image by Di Wang


Chicago Quantum Exchange produces new quantum education video series for high schoolers

June 20, 2023

close up of the front of a video camera

Kate Timmerman, CEO of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, comments on Quick Quantum: for High Schoolers, an educational video series.


Flow proof helps mathematicians find stability in chaos

June 16, 2023

Headshot of Amie Wilkinson

Prof. Amie Wilkinson discusses a series of new papers that describe how to reconstruct key dynamical systems with relatively little data.


Tempest in a teacup: UChicago physicists make breakthrough in creating turbulence

June 15, 2023

A fuzzy purple, pink, orange, and yellow ball on black background--a visualization of the average energy density of a

Scientists, including physicist William Irvine, create contained ball of turbulence in a tank that could help answer longstanding questions.

UChicago News
Image courtesy Takumi Matsuzawa


The clams that fell behind, and what they can tell us about evolution and extinction

June 15, 2023

Black and white micro-CT scans of 460-million-year-old bivalves Anomalodonta (left) and Vanuxemia (right)

UChicago scientists, including David Jablonski, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor of Geophysical Sciences, study how bivalves evolved after the Cambrian Explosion.

UChicago News
Images courtesy Stewart Edie


‘Breakthrough’ could explain why life molecules are left- or right-handed

June 14, 2023

Jack Szostak in a blue sweater, grey blazer, standing in a lab

Prof. Jack Szostak comments on several new papers that suggest a path for key biomolecules to have accumulated on Earth's surface in just one mirror image form, saying “it’s a real breakthrough...homochirality is essential to get biology started, and this is a possible—and I would say very likely—solution.”


Streaming with Brad: Canadian wildfire impact

June 14, 2023

Liz Moyer in a lavender top outside

Will the wildfires get worse? Prof. Elizabeth Moyer joins CBS 2’s Brad Edwards to talk more about the impacts of the Canadian wildfires.


Climate change warning signs started in the 1800s. Here’s what humanity knew and when.

June 12, 2023

Black and white photo of Thomas C. Chamberlin, sitting in front of a bookcase

Article notes that in 1896, Prof. Thomas Chamberlin wrote about carbon dioxide's role in regulating the earth's temperature.

University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf6-00222, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.


NASA mission to the sun answers questions about solar wind that causes aurora borealis

June 9, 2023

glowing, green-hued aurora, seen above surface of Earth from ISS, with solar array in partial view

Article mentions UChicago research on solar winds.

​​​​​​​Image courtesy NASA


U of C, France scientific partnership a win for Chicago as a research, tech hub

June 8, 2023

Arial shot of UChicago Hyde Park campus

Juan de Pablo, executive vice president for science, innovation, national laboratories and global initiatives, discusses a partnership establishing the International Research Center for Fundamental Scientific Discovery in Hyde Park.


How solar wind flows from the sun like water from a shower head

June 8, 2023

Artist rendition of the Parker Solar Probe in front of the sun

Article discusses the latest discoveries of NASA’s Parker probe, which is named after the late Eugene N. Parker, a UChicago astrophysicist who first predicted the existence of solar wind in 1958.

Image courtesy NASA


Prof. Angela V. Olinto reappointed as dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences

June 5, 2023

Angela V. Olinto

Prof. Angela V. Olinto has been reappointed as dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences, President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker announced on June 5, 2023. A leading scholar in astroparticle physics and cosmology, Olinto is the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and the Enrico Fermi Institute.