2021
Congratulations to Angela Olinto
April 26, 2021
Angela Olinto has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and to to the National Academy of Sciences.
Associate Professor Daniel Fabrycky won the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring
March 22, 2021
Dan Fabrycky has been selected as a winner of the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring. Dan will receive the prize and recognition during Convocation Weekend.
“Using powerful lasers, scientists recreate how magnetic fields grow in clusters of galaxies”, by Louise Lerner, UChicago News
March 16, 2021
“This work blazes a path to laboratory investigations of a variety of astrophysical processes mediated by magnetized turbulence,” said Don Lamb, the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago and principal investigator of the Turbulent Dynamo team National Laser User’s Facility project. “It’s truly exciting to see the scientific results that the ingenuity of this team is making possible.”
“The solar wind, explained”, by Louise Lerner, UChicago News
March 11, 2021
The solar wind is a flow of particles that comes off the sun at about one million miles per hour and travels throughout the entire solar system. First proposed in the 1950s by University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker, the solar wind is visible in the halo around the sun during an eclipse and sometimes when the particles hit the Earth’s atmosphere—as the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
“Scientists confirm third-nearest star with a planet—and it’s rocky like Earth”, by Louise Lerner, UChicago News
March 4, 2021
MAROON-X instrument built by UChicago team measures its first planet.
In the past two decades, scientists have discovered more and more planets orbiting distant stars—but in some sense, they’re still just dots on a map.
“It’s kind of like looking at a map of Europe and seeing the dot that’s labeled ‘Paris,’” said University of Chicago astrophysicist Jacob Bean. “You know where it is, but there’s a whole lot that you’re missing about the city.”
“Aging stars provide a new cosmological yardstick”, by Nora Bailey, PSD News
March 1, 2021
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?
“Synergies and a supernova”, by Sherry Byrne, UChicago Library News
February 24, 2021
Library staff, faculty, and students join forces to drive new astronomical discoveries
The University of Chicago Library continues to look to the sky in our ongoing collaborative work 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. Since we last reported on the project in 2019 (“Mining historical glass slides for astronomical data”), a National Science Foundation grant, new collaborations, and detection of a likely supernova have furthered our work, strengthened our partnerships, and expanded our experiences and expertise.
New metamaterials for studying the oldest light in the universe
February 19, 2021
Richard Kron, Sloan Digital Sky Survey co-founder, retires
February 9, 2021
Dan Hooper: What happened at the Big Bang?
February 4, 2021
Joshua Frieman & Eugene Parker named Fellows of the American Astronomical Society
February 4, 2021
Roger Hildebrand, Manhattan Project veteran and ‘giant’ of physics and astrophysics, 1922-2021
January 27, 2021
Dark Energy Survey releases catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects to the public
January 14, 2021
2020
Peter O. Vandervoort, astrophysicist and beloved UChicago mentor, 1935-2020
December 18, 2020
John Carlstrom named 2020 AAAS Fellow
November 25, 2020