astrophysics

Chemistry and Physics Professors Receive NSF CAREER Awards

Two rising stars in the sciences have received prestigious CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program recognizes junior faculty who conduct outstanding research, are excellent educators and include education or community outreach in their work.

Simulations Reveal Signs of Galaxy Mergers in Milky Way Disk

Some of the Milky Way’s oldest stars have been spotted in a surprising place — the disk that is our galaxy’s youngest region. Supercomputer simulations of their orbits suggest these metal-poor stars came from a smaller galaxy that slammed into the Milky Way more than 7 billion years ago.

Observing Dusty Galaxies in the Early Universe

Astronomers are getting a look at the dusty part of the distant universe with a huge field of telescopes in the high, dry Atacama desert of Chile. New results are telling us about the structure of the distant universe and yielding surprises about the evolution of galaxies.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, collects infrared light, so astronomers can learn more about distant galaxies as well as picking up objects that they could not see at all in the visible or ultraviolet spectrum.

Ironing the Wrinkles Out of Spacetime

According to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, gravity is curvature in the fabric of spacetime. Shockwaves can distort spacetime, causing singularities where the laws of physics appear to break down.

Now two mathematicians at UC Davis have come up with equations that remove these singularities. In doing so, they also extend a theorem called Uhlenbeck Compactness to the setting of General Relativity.

Taking the Temperature of Dark Matter

Warm, cold, just right? Physicists at the University of California, Davis, are taking the temperature of dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about a quarter of our universe.

Explaining the Tiger Stripes of Enceladus

Saturn’s tiny, frozen moon Enceladus is a strange place. Just 300 miles across, the moon is thought to have an outer shell of ice covering a global ocean 20 miles deep, encasing a rocky core. Slashed across Enceladus’ south pole are four straight, parallel fissures or “tiger stripes” from which water erupts. These fissures aren’t quite like anything else in the solar system.