Posts Tagged Adam Frank

The University is the host institution for a NSF-funded national collaboration to explore ‘revolutionary states of matter.’

Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy, is searching for “technosignatures,” or the physical and chemical traces of advanced civilizations, among the 4,000 or so exoplanets scientists have found so far.

Like infectious disease researchers, climate change scientists have warned for decades that we are unprepared. Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank says, “It’s time to wake up.”

The University of Rochester astrophysicist recently received the American Physical Society’s 2020 Joseph A. Burton Forum Award and his latest book Light of the Stars was awarded the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science.

Three of eight national research grants recently awarded by the Department of Energy were given to researchers at the University of Rochester, which is home to the largest university-based DOE research program in the nation.

“There’s so much to look at, and we’ve done so little of it so far,” Rochester professor of astrophysics Adam Frank told NPR’s All Things Considered.

Does the universe contain planets with truly sustainable civilizations? Or does every civilization that may have arisen in the cosmos last only a few centuries before it falls to the climate change it triggers? Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank and his collaborators have developed a mathematical model to illustrate how a technologically advanced population and its planet might develop together, putting climate change in a cosmic context.

Imagine if, many millions of years ago, dinosaurs drove cars through cities of mile-high buildings. A preposterous idea, right? In a compelling thought experiment, professor of physics and astronomy Adam Frank and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin Schmidt wonder how we would truly know if there were a past civilization so advanced that it left little or no trace of its impact on the planet.

For more than 50 years, the Kardashev scale has been the gold standard for classifying hypothetical “exo-civilizations” by their ability to harness energy. A team of researchers led by Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank have devised a new system that takes into account the impacts of that energy use.

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Professor Adam Frank makes the case for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s role in earth-centric science. “Without NASA, climate research worldwide would be hobbled,” he writes.