News Archive
Woodward part of research team that captures unique images of Io’s volcanoes
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Jupiter’s moon, Io, is one of the most volcanically active body in the solar system and yet, scientists have not been able to capture detailed images of volcanism and lava flows regularly. School of Physics and Astronomy Professor Charles “Chick” Woodward is part of a research team that was able to image four of Io’s volcanoes with greater detail than ever before from Earth based observatories. Io is over 390 million miles from the earth and the images enabled the team to resolve and study surface features less than 2 kilometers in size.
The Big Picture: Rudnick helps lead effort that reveals the stormy weather in galaxy clusters
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Professor Emeritus Lawrence Rudnick of the School of Physics and Astronomy led the Technical Working Group of the MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey (MGCLS).
Roberta Humphreys on Luminous Blue Variables
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Professor Roberta Humphreys of the School of Physics and Astronomy recently gave a colloquium that served as a primer on “some of the most interesting stars I know: luminous blue variables (LBVs). These are among the most massive, most luminous stars known and in their short lifetimes experience high mass loss episodes that are not understood.
Pryke leads research effort that improves constraints on Physics of Big Bang
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Professor Clem Pryke of the School of Physics and Astronomy has recently published a paper using data from the BICEP/Keck experiments at the South Pole to refine models of the early expansion of the Universe after the Big Bang.
Greven research finds stretching quantum materials could tune their efficiency
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Professor Martin Greven, a Distinguished McKnight Professor in the University of Minnesota’s School of Physics and Astronomy and the Director of the Center for Quantum Materials, led research efforts that found that deformations in quantum materials that create an imperfection in their crystalline structure, can actually improve the material's superconducting and electrical properties.
Searching for Stealth SUSY
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Nadja Strobbe, who joined the School as an assistant professor in 2019, is leading an investigation into what she calls “stealth Supersymmetry (SUSY).” The elusive process of supersymmetry is a theoretical extension of the Standard Model that predicts a partner particle for every particle. These new particles could solve a major problem with the Standard Model – fixing the mass of the Higgs boson. To date, there has been no evidence for supersymmetry, although experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have ruled out some of the simplest models.
Mu2e an (almost) impossible experiment
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Physicists at the University of Minnesota are building an experiment that they readily admit is almost impossible.
The Red Hypergiant VY CMa – Betelgeuse on Steroids
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Professor Roberta Humphreys of the School of Physics and Astronomy led a study with the Hubble Space Telescope to explain the origin of numerous high mass-loss ejections from a very massive star.
Pribiag to help lead NSF-funded ‘Global Quantum Leap’
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Effort aims to accelerate the discovery of next generation computing and communications systems
Minnesota physicists complete detailed study of Higgs boson decays
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Physicists at the University of Minnesota have announced a detailed study of the physical processes where a Higgs boson is produced and decays to two photons.