It’s no secret that active learning helps students learn and retain more information than they would from traditional, lecture-only instruction.  A new paper by Colin Wallace, a Teaching Associate Professor in our Department, and his colleagues at the University of … Read more

Our department chair, Christian Iliadis, recently appeared on Planet Gabo and the Player vs Life Podcast. The title of the podcast was “The Cosmos: The Influence of Astrophysics and Sci-Fi.” The interviewer, Gabriel Espinoza, writes about his “Player vs Life … Read more

  Using observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a team of astronomers has discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than Earth orbiting a much younger version of our Sun. Called TOI 451, the system resides in the … Read more

  Our department’s own Ben Levy, a 6th year graduate student in Professor Amy Oldenburg’s Coherence Imaging Laboratory, has been awarded the Tanner Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching by graduate teaching assistants. Ben teaches PHYS 281: Experimental Techniques in … Read more

Just over 100 years ago, physicists stumbled upon an elementary particle that could answer questions about the origin of the universe. Elusive and almost nonexistent, neutrinos may be the solution to understanding everything from the Big Bang to the inner … Read more

Astronomy Graduate Student Amy Glazier has been selected for the inaugural cohort of NASA’s Exoplanet Explorers program. One of ten early-career scientists selected nationally for the program, Amy will join the NASA ExoExplorers team, present her research to the exoplanet … Read more

UNC Chapel Hill explores new method for measuring galactic evolution of lithium.   In a new Report led by UNC graduate student Ben Kaiser and published in the journal Science, astrophysicists and astronomers from UNC, the University of Montreal, and Los Alamos National Lab … Read more

Morgan Clark, a fourth year doctoral student in neutrino physics, explains the impact and importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work in the Physics and Astronomy Department. Earlier this year, Clark was selected as the first DEI Scholar. She … Read more

Bernard Gray Distinguished Professor Laurie McNeil has been elected a member of the Council of Representatives of the American Physical Society. The Council has oversight of APS’s publications and conferences, must approve all policy statements and science strategy actions, and … Read more

The Ally Spotlight is a new project from the Diversity Committee designed to celebrate staff, faculty, + students who have taken the initiative to develop their allyship skills to help foster a more inclusive department. This month, we are featuring … Read more

Our own Nathan Galliher from the Law lab was recently published for a paper he wrote. Using photometric data collected by Evryscope-South they search for nearby young variable systems on the upper main sequence and pre main sequence. The Evryscopes … Read more

The Cosmological Lithium Problem The standard model of the Big Bang rests on three observational pillars. The first is the cosmic microwave background radiation. The second is the cosmic expansion as measured by the light from distant supernovae. The third … Read more