UNC physics professor Laura Mersini-Houghton was featured in the October 2014 issue of Discover magazine. In the article, she says that anomalies in the Planck full sky map may be evidence of multiverses. The Planck mapping project measures cosmic radiation which resulted shortly after the formation of the universe. Dr. Mersini-Houghton believes that asymmetry in these maps is an indication that, rather than there being a single universe in existence, there are many. The full article from Discover is linked below.

Discover Magazine: Beyond the Outer Limits

An automated optics system developed in part by UNC Professor Nick Law brings clarity to astronomical observation. The robotic adaptive optics system (Robo-AO) has already been used to observe 715 of the star systems detected by the Kepler Space Mission. It utilizes lasers to reduce atmospheric noise and capture data automatically, eliminating the need for manual telescope calibration and thus saving time while producing very high quality results. There are plans to develop similar technology on UNC’s SOAR telescope project in Chile.

Read more:

Nature’s Kepler Mission Article

Coverage in The Daily Tar Heel

A novel telescope proposed by UNC astronomer Nick Law will take images of the whole sky every two minutes to look for exoplanets transiting in front of their host stars, and other transient events. The project has been fully funded by the NSF Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation (ATI) program and has been featured in MIT Technology Review.

Related Links:

Project website: http://evryscope.astro.unc.edu/

MIT source article: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528911/how-to-build-an-evryscope/

Astronomers have identified what is quite possibly the coldest, faintest white dwarf star ever discovered. Its carbon has cooled to a point that it has crystallized, creating what is essentially a “diamond” in space that is roughly the size of earth. UNC-CH graduate student Bart Dunlap contributed to the research that led to this finding.

Read more at Science Daily or Universe Today.

Image credit: B. Saxton.

A few days ago, we teased that we have an exciting result to share with you. Here it is!

On June 3rd, Chariklo — the largest object between Saturn and Uranus — passed in front of a relatively bright star. It cast a shadow across South America.

A collaboration of telescopes — including Skynet’s PROMPT telescopes in Chile — timed the occultation of the star by Chariklo, hoping to use the data to better measure Chariklo’s size and shape:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_SF1.html

But when we analyzed the data, we were surprised to find that something also dimmed the light before, and again after, the main occultation. Two moons?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_F1.html

No, because we saw these additional occultations at each telescope — each under a different part of the shadow:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_SF3.html

Putting everyone’s data together, it was clear that we had discovered a ring — two rings actually!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_F2.html

This is the first detection of rings around a solar-system body other than the four gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

For more information on Chariklo:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=546160778763555

For the press release:
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1410/

For the full scientific article, in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13155.html

The UNC Physics and Astronomy Department is doing its part to transform large lecture halls into smaller, more personal learning environments. Along with many other departments in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, P&A is providing students the opportunity to participate in a hands-on learning experience.

More on this story can be found at the UNC Spotlight website.

The Sanford Lab in Lead, South Dakota, will be featured in a category on the game show ‘Jeopardy!’ this Friday, 2/21/2014. The lab is the home of research related to the MAJORANA project. Click the link below for the full story.

Sanford Lab Featured on Jeopardy!

The Graduate School has announced Laurel Burk, a postdoctoral research associate with UNC Physics and Astronomy, as the 2014 recipient of the Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award for Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering. The award recognizes exemplary scholarly work in doctoral dissertation projects. Four awards are announced each year, spanning four categories. Winners of this award may be submitted by the university to the Council of Graduate Schools for national recognition. This is a very high honor, and the UNC Physics and Astronomy department wishes to congratulate Laurel for this outstanding achievement.

Chancellor Carol Folt announced the winners of the 2014 University Teaching Awards during halftime of the January 26 men’s basketball game. Professor Christian Iliadis was announced as the university’s nominee for the Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Professor Charles Evans was recognized for a Distinguished Teaching Award for his post-baccalaureate instruction. The University Teaching Awards are the highest recognition for teaching excellence on campus. The department would like to congratulate both faculty members for their hard work and dedication.

Assistant Professor Amy Oldenburg, Physics & Astronomy, has received an NSF CAREER award for her project titled “Imaging multi-scale viscoelastic properties of cancer-associated remodeling.” The project involves the development of a novel optical imaging instrument combining holography and optical coherence tomography to study early-stage breast cancer.

Read more about Dr. Oldenburg’s research here.

UNC Physics Professors Otto Zhou and Jianping Lu, along with Radiation Oncology Professor Sha Chang, have developed a promising new therapy for cancer tumors that is based on carbon nanotube x-ray emitters developed in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Read more in the UNC Healthcare article.