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09/04/2014

Big Data Summer School Is in Session—Virtually

Kathy Svitil

Caltech and JPL are offering an unusual take on the massive open online course (MOOC) model: a two-week-long "virtual summer school" class, providing advanced instruction by experts at Caltech and JPL on the computational skills and methods used in the analysis of complex data sets—that is, of "big data."

08/21/2014

Atwater to Receive Applied Physics Prize

Kathy Svitil

The annual prize recognizes researchers who have made "an outstanding and innovative contribution" to the field of applied physics.

08/15/2014

Superstring Theorist Honored with Science Writing Prize

Kathy Svitil

Caltech's Hirosi Ooguri has been selected to receive the Kodansha Prize for Science Books, Japan's only major prize for science books, for his popular science work, Introduction to Superstring Theory.

08/05/2014

The Birth and Death of Our Solar System

Cynthia Eller

An interview with Konstantin Batygin, who recently joined the Caltech faculty as assistant professor of planetary science.

07/28/2014

TMT Construction Gets Green Light

Kathy Svitil

The Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources has given the official green light for construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea, home to many of the world's premier astronomical observatories.

07/22/2014

50 Years of Quarks

Douglas Smith

Caltech's Murray Gell-Mann simplified the world of particle physics in 1964 by standing it on its head. He theorized that protons—subatomic particles as solid as billiard balls and as stable as the universe—were actually cobbled together from bizarre entities, dubbed "quarks," whose properties are unlike anything seen in our world. Unlike protons, quarks cannot be separated from their fellows and studied in isolation; despite this, our understanding of the universe is built on their amply documented existence.

Yuval Ne'eman and Murray Gell-Mann in 1964.

07/22/2014

Ed Stone Honored

Douglas Smith

Ed Stone, Caltech's David Morrisroe Professor of Physics, has won the aerospace equivalent of an Oscar. On Wednesday, July 16, the American Astronautical Society (AAS) presented him its sixth Lifetime Achievement Award for his "sustained and extraordinary contributions to America's space programs, including innovative planetary missions."

07/17/2014

Future Electronics May Depend on Lasers

Jessica Stoller-Conrad

Caltech researchers stabilize microwave oscillators with optical frequencies from a silicon chip. The approach could ultimately replace more conventional methods that rely on crystal references.

06/27/2014

Kip Thorne Discusses First Discovery of Thorne-Żytkow Object

Cynthia Eller

We recently sat down with Kip Thorne to ask how it feels to have astronomers discover something whose existence he postulated decades before.

05/21/2014

Supernova Caught in the Act by Palomar Transient Factory

Cynthia Eller

The problem with observing supernovae is knowing just when and where one is occurring and being able to point a world-class telescope at it in the hours immediately afterward.

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