News: 2023

University of Chicago professor David A. Mazziotti, and grad students LeeAnn M. Sager-Smith and Anna O. Schouten, explained how they discovered the link and what it could mean for the future of how we power our homes and cities.

Physicists will resume their hunt for astrophysical monsters: black holes and neutron stars going bump in the dark and emitting ripples in space called gravitational waves. But one of the three detectors that have spotted such waves—Virgo, near Pisa, Italy—has run into technical problems that will delay its restart, 3 years after all the facilities shut down for maintenance and upgrades. 

Stimulating nerves on the back of your hand makes it feel like you are grasping things in VR without needing to have your palms covered in material.

Update: NASA's super pressure baloon mission terminated due to anomaly - May 14

On May 12, NASA launched an experiment built by a PSD-led international team to send a scientific balloon to 110,000 feet above the Earth. The project, termed Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon or EUSO-SPB2, is searching for messengers from outer space: tiny, highly energetic particles that hit the Earth on their way from elsewhere in the universe.

Photo by NASA/Bill Rodman

A team led by scientists from UChicago and the University of Maryland used the Webb telescope to observe GJ 1214b’s atmosphere by measuring the heat it emits while orbiting its host star. The exoplanet is too hot to be habitable, but likely contains water vapor.

A new way to gauge the universe’s expansion rate has delivered a confusing result that may conflict with previous related measurements.

New observations and sharper tools are fueling the debate over a long-sought measurement of how fast the universe is expanding.

Profs. Wendy Freedman and Matthew Stephens have been elected to the Royal Society, a fellowship of many of the world’s most eminent scientists and the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. This year, 59 scientists from around the world were elected Fellows or Foreign Members of the Society for their outstanding contributions to science.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $52.66 million to upgrade the Simons Observatory, a set of telescopes high in the Chilean desert that looks for traces of light from the earliest epochs of the universe.  Improvements include upgraded receiver, solar panels to power the observatory and data processing pipeline

New Scientist features a mechanical backpack developed by Prof. Pedro Lopes and his colleagues. JumpMod can enhance the sensation of virtual reality by sliding a weight up and down.

An ‘ever blossoming’ newly installed digital artwork can now be seen in the lobby of University of Chicago’s William Eckhardt Research Center. The artwork, titled Ever Blossoming Life – Gold (2014), was created by the interdisciplinary art collective teamLab and is the only digital artwork permanently on view and available to the public at the University. It was recently acquired by the Smart Museum of Art through a unique partnership with the Physical Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

Image courtesy of the artists/Pace Gallery, New York

Two PSD undergraduate students, Cameron Chang and Steven Labalme, have received Barry Goldwater Scholarships, awarded annually based on academic merit and undergraduate research in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. They are among the 417 U.S. college students to be selected for this award out of a pool of over 5,000 applicants. Considered the preeminent undergraduate award of its kind, the scholarship covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to $7,500 per year. It also helps STEM students fund their research during their final years of undergraduate study.

U.S. News & World Report released the 2023 rankings for the top science schools for graduate education in the United States. The Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago was well-represented in top rankings for graduate programs and specialties.

A University of Chicago study found links at the atomic level between photosynthesis and exciton condensates—a strange state of physics that allows energy to flow frictionlessly through a material. The finding is scientifically intriguing and may suggest new ways to think about designing electronics, the authors said.

Modern science suggests that we and all our achievements and memories are destined to vanish like a dream. Is that sad or good?