News tagged with 'astronomy & physics' Subscribe via RSS

11/08/2013

John H. Schwarz Wins Physics Frontiers Prize

Cynthia Eller

Schwarz and Michael B. Green of the University of Cambridge were honored for developing superstring theory during their collaboration between 1979 and 1986. The prize comes with a $300,000 award and eligibility for the 2014 Fundamental Physics Prize, which, at $3 million, is one of the largest academic prizes in the world.

11/06/2013

From One Collapsing Star, Two Black Holes Form and Fuse

Jessica Stoller-Conrad

Now new findings by Caltech researchers may help to test a model that helps explain the problem of supermassive black holes existing in the early universe—such black holes would have formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang.

10/28/2013

Building the World's Most Sensitive Detectors: A Conversation with Rana Adhikari

Cynthia Eller

Caltech professor of physics Rana Adhikari has been on a singular quest for 15 years: to detect gravitational waves.

10/16/2013

Sky Survey Captures Key Details of Cosmic Explosions

Katie Neith

Astronomical surveys have been cataloguing the night sky since the beginning of the 20th century. The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF)—led by Caltech—started searching the skies for certain types of stars and related phenomena in February. Two recent papers by iPTF astronomers describe first-time detections.

10/15/2013

Watson Lecture: Let There Be Light: Finding the Earliest Galaxies

Douglas Smith

Richard S. Ellis, the Steele Family Professor of Astronomy, is on the verge of seeing as far back as it is possible to see—not quite back to the dawn of time itself but to the dawn of the first galaxies. He describes the journey at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, October 16, in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium. Admission is free.

09/25/2013

Spirals of Light May Lead to Better Electronics

Jessica Stoller-Conrad

A group of researchers at Caltech has created the optical equivalent of a tuning fork—a device that can help steady the electrical currents needed to power high-end electronics and stabilize the signals of high-quality lasers.

09/12/2013

Voyager 1 Enters Interstellar Space

Allison Benter

Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space. The NASA spacecraft, which rose from Earth on a September morning 36 years ago, has traveled farther than anyone, or anything, in history. Now Voyager 1 is in the space between the stars.

07/29/2013

Thirty Meter Telescope Project Partners Sign Master Agreement

Jessica Stoller-Conrad

Scientific authorities on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project announced on Friday that they have now signed a master agreement formalizing project goals and providing a governing framework for the international collaboration.

05/10/2013

Notes from the Back Row: "Quantum Entanglement and Quantum Computing"

Douglas Smith

John Preskill, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, is hooked on quanta.

05/03/2013

Birth of a Black Hole

Marcus Woo

According to a new analysis by astrophysicist Tony Piro at Caltech, just before a black hole forms, the dying star may generate a distinct burst of light that will allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time.

« Previous aria-label 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 Next »