Posts Tagged Department of Physics and Astronomy

How can we calculate the likelihood of technological civilizations having existed on other planets? That’s a question Adam Frank, professor of astronomy, considers in an essay, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens,” published in the New York Times.

Physicist Segev BenZvi and scientists at an ambitious observatory are using simple but groundbreaking tools understand the workings of cosmic and gamma rays in the Earth’s atmosphere while also contributing to the search for dark matter.

Astronomy professor Adam Frank traces the “line from [Ellis] Chesbrough’s audacious plan to make Chicago a clean, functioning city 150 years ago and the invisible infrastructures hiding behind your cell phone” today. / NPR.org

Until now, it was thought the cracks on icy moons such as Pluto’s Charon were the result of processes like plate tectonics. But new computer models suggest that the pull exerted by another object might have been the cause.

Using the same mathematical framework as the Rochester Cloak, researchers have been able to use flat screen displays to extend the range of angles that can be hidden from view. Their method lays out how cloaks of arbitrary shapes, that work from multiple viewpoints, may be practically realized in the near future using commercially available digital devices.

A team led by Robert Boyd has demonstrated that the transparent, electrical conductor indium tin oxide can result in up to 100 times greater nonlinearity than other known materials, a potential ‘game changer’ for photonics applications.

The Kavli HUMAN Project holds great promise for putting big data to the test. But as astronomy professor Adam Frank argue, “with great promise comes great responsibility.” / NPR

Rochester researchers have developed a new conceptual framework for understanding how stars similar to our Sun evolve. Their framework helps explain how the rotation of stars, their emission of x-rays, and the intensity of their stellar winds vary with time. According to Eric Blackman, professor of physics and astronomy, the work could also “ultimately help to determine the age of stars more precisely than is currently possible.”

David Cameron, a visiting scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has discovered a new comet – the first to be discovered by an astronomer associated with the University or with the Rochester area in over a century, his colleagues believe.

A team led by professors Steven Manly and Kevin McFarland was honored “for the fundamental discovery of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics.”