News

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC)has been in operation for just over a year, collecting detailed observations of approximately two-thirds of the sky at high energy gamma-ray wavelengths with about 15 times the sensitivity of previous gamma-ray survey instruments.

Analysis of the composition of meteorites by a research team at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) has turned up evidence that microscopic dust particles imbedded in some meteoritic materials show signs of possibly having been produced in stellar explosions long before the solar system formed.

Chris Adami, Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, has partnered with Kamil Brádler of the University of Ottawa to create a detailed model of a black hole's interaction with its surrounding field of Hawking radiation.

Abrams Planetarium has a new featured show, "Skywatchers of Africa", which explores African cultural uses of astronomical information which have developed over time. Aspects of societies in Africa, ranging from spirituality to ritual to ordinary survival needs, have for thousands of years been influenced by their knowledge of the sky.

Physics and Astronomy Professor Mark Voit is one of ten winners of the 2016 William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award. This award will be one of many which will be presented to various accomplished members of the MSU Community at the annual MSU Awards Convocation at 3:30 pm on February 9th at Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre.

Marcos Dantus, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, is a leading expert on ultrafast laser pulse technology.

MSU Physics and Astronomy Assistant Professors Sean Couch and Chris Wrede are among the 49 scientists nationwide to be selected by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science to receive significant funding for their research as part of the DOE's 2016 Early Career Research Program. Of these 49 recipients, 27 are from U.S universities and 22 are from DOE's national laboratories.

Advances in the speed of computer hardware have been accompanied by massive increases in the amount of memory which the faster processors can handle. While these advances enable systems to process larger and more detailed sets of data ranging from scientific analysis to website content to online gaming to streaming video, the vast amount of information needs to be stored for access, and that takes a considerable amount of electrical power.

MSU Physics & Astronomy Assistant Professor Kendall Mahn has been named a recipient of a 2016 Sloan Research Fellowship.

The Sloan Research Fellowships seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. These two-year fellowships are awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation yearly to 126 researchers in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field. They provide $55,000 of research funding over the two years of the fellowship.

Physics and Astronomy Professor Mark Voit is one of ten MSU Faculty members to receive one of this year's ten William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Awards.

Richard Lunt, a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, received one of this year's six Teacher-Scholar Awards.

MSU Physics and Astronomy theoretical nuclear physics graduate student Amy Lowell was among the six new recipients of the U. S. Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship this year.

MSU Physics & Astronomy Assistant Professor Jaideep Singh's research into magnetizing the inert gases helium and xenon for use in enhancing MRI scans, especially for the lungs, is featured in a December 9th MSU Today article.

The online magazine "The Conversation" published an article on 13 November 2015 by MSU Physics & Astronomy Associate Professor Tyce DeYoung describing research with the IceCube experiment at the South Pole, which uses a billion tons of Antarctic ice to detect the by-products of high energy neutrino collisions.

A November 3rd, 2015, MSU Today article highlights a set of computational results newly released by an international team of theoretical nuclear physicists including MSU Physics & Astronomy Professors Witold Nazarewicz and Morten Hjorth-Jensen.

The STAR Collaboration, with nearly 600 members from 57 research institutions around the world, including MSU/NSCL physicists Gary Westfall, John Novak and Terry Tarnowsky, has published an article in Nature describing the first direct measurements of interactions among anti-protons.

The MSU Cyclotron facility, which has since become the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, is celebrating 50 years of producing nuclear particle beams this year, and there is an MSU Today article exploring several facets of its history and events celebrating the anniversary.

The "Faculty Voice" item in the 22 July 2015 MSU Today 360 Viewpoint section was written by Abrams Planetarium Director Shannon Schmoll, who has recently returned from a visit to several observatories in the mountains of Chile as part of the National Science Foundation-funded Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassador Program, which she describes in her article.

MSU P-A Assistant Professor Sean Couch is part of a research team developing advanced models of stellar structure and evolution. They have recently published results describing the events leading up to massive stars' collapse and explosion as supernovae, based on computer models treating the process fully in three dimensions.