This instrument will observe gammas from electromagnetic decays of (relatively!) fresh nucleosynthesis products from explosive astrophysical environments as well as gammas from positron annihilation and other sources. As such it will be in a position to constrain ideas on the synthesis of the elements and chemical and Galactic evolution. The instrument can also give a handle on the production of positrons in the Galaxy. These capabilities put COSI at the heart of the multi-messenger astrophysics enterprise. Its observations may provide insight into the origin of the r-process in compact object-based sources, the nature of dark matter, primordial black holes, and the possible effects of these if captured by neutron stars. See the NASA website announcement - Read More

We congratulate Professor Quinn Konopacky on receiving a prestigious National Science Foundation Career Award! The following link gives a write-up on this award and on the other UCSD Physical Sciences faculty NSF Career Award recipients. Read More

Graduate student Christian Aganze has been awarded the Beth Brown Memorial Award, recognizing his contribution to the 2020 National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) conference, “Searching for Distant Ultracool Dwarfs in Deep HST/WFC3 Surveys”, as the Best Graduate Student Poster Presentation. Read More

Prof. Adam Burgasser was elected to be the next Vice-President of the American Astronomical Society. As one of three VPs elected on overlapping 3-year terms, Burgasser will be responsible for organizing AAS national conferences and serves on the AAS Board of Trustees. Read More

The Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS), established in 2016 as the first NSF “Hub”, has now become a full NSF Physics Frontier Center (PFC). The NSF PFC award was made effective September 1, 2020.

Headquartered at UC Berkeley, with Wick Haxton as the the overall PI, the new PFC has co-Investigators from several other institutions including: Andre DeGouvea, Northwestern University; Sanjay Reddy, University of Washington; Gail McLaughlin, North Carolina State University; Baha Balantekin, University of Wisconsin Madison; and George Fuller and Tongyan Lin from UC San Diego.

The primary research foci of the N3AS will be on neutrino physics and astrophysics, the origin of the elements, the physics of dense and ultra-dense matter, compact object and early universe physics, gravitational wave and multi-messenger astrophysics, astrophysical simulation and high performance computing, and the nature of dark matter.

The original N3AS Hub had contributions over three years of $2.4M from NSF and $575,000 from the Heising-Simons Foundation. The commitment from NSF for the new PFC will be $10.9M over five years. The N3AS, currently with 8 postdoctoral fellows, will seek to hire 4 fellows per year to conduct research for 3 years. Fellows will spend the first two years at any of the N3AS institutions of their choosing. They will move to a different N3AS institution for year 3. In practice, the fellows collaborate across these institutions, with adequate funding for (in better times) travel. The N3AS website: Read More

Chris Theissen is among five recipients of the 2020-21 Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar. This award recognizes the well-rounded postdoctoral scholar who not only excels in research and advances the frontiers of science, but also provides leadership, mentorship, and service. Congratulations Chris!

Prof. Adam Burgasser and graduate student Roman Gerasimov have contributed to the discovery and analysis of two ancient brown dwarfs that have heavy element abundances 10-100 times less than the Sun, first identified by a team of citizen scientists. Read More

Prof. Karin Sandstrom has been selected to receive an Outstanding Mentor Award Karin was nominated by students and selected from a competitive group of faculty from the entire campus. Congratulations Karin!

Astronomers have spotted a massive disk galaxy, not unlike our own, that formed 12.5 billion years ago when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only a tenth of its current age. But according to what scientists know about galaxy formation, this one has no business being in the distant universe.

This discovery is challenging how astronomers think about galaxy formation in the early universe.

It's known as Galaxy DLA0817g, but astronomers nicknamed it the Wolfe Disk after late astronomer Arthur M. Wolfe. Read More

Sad news. Margaret Burbidge has passed away. She was 100 years old. A towering figure in the development of modern physics and astronomy, she was also instrumental in founding and guiding UCSD’s efforts in those fields. Margaret and her late husband Geoffrey Burbidge were founding faculty of the UCSD Physics Department. Here is the UCSD News article. For the New York Times article: Read More

Luke Johns is among the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program 2020 Fellows. He has been named an Einstein Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His proposal title was Oscillating Neutrinos in Core-collapse Supernovae. As an Einstein Fellow, Luke will seek to understand how neutrino flavor evolves in core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers. Congratulations, Luke! Read More

Graduate student Chih-chun "Dino" Hsu has been awarded a Friends of the International Center Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to graduate students and medical students that “in some way promote international friendship, understanding, and cooperation in a meaningful way.” Both international scholars and scholars conducting international research with international ties are eligible to apply. Dino was one of 30 applicants selected for this award across UCSD campus. Read More

Astronomers working on “first light” data from a newly commissioned telescope in Chile made a chance discovery that led to the identification of a rare eclipse of two brown dwarfs. The result published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. Professor Adam Burgasser is co-author on the paper. Read More

A team of astronomers led by UC San Diego physicist Shelley Wright is deploying a pair of telescopes that will constantly search the nighttime sky for signals from intelligent life in our galaxy. Read More

CASS' very own E. Margaret Burbidge has been named the Inaugural Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Please see the link below. Professor Burbidge is a towering figure in the development of modern astronomy and astrophysics. Her pioneering research in nucleosynthesis, relativistic astrophysics and QSOs/AGN, and novel use of instrumentation has been highly influential. "I know that in many ways her early work brought about the current synergistic relationship between observational astronomy and frontline nuclear and particle physics. Margaret’s scientific accomplishments have served as an inspiration to generations of young astronomers and physicists. As the AAS write-up explains, Margaret also 'broke the observatory gender boundary in the mid-20th century', and this has had very significant positive impact for women in astronomy and physics. We are very fortunate to have her and her legacy in CASS/UCSD," said Prof. George Fuller, CASS Director. Read More

With nearly $1 million in new funding from the foundation, Professor Quinn Konopacky is leading an effort to upgrade the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a high-contrast imaging system for directly detecting and studying Jupiter-like planets. The upgrades will transform GPI into an enhanced imaging system for the new decade. Read More

Ax Center for Experimental Cosmology (ACEC) opened a new lab space called the High Bay Physics Laboratory to integrate and test cryogenic receivers for the Simons Observatory’s small aperture telescopes, known as SATs. Read More

In a paper on “The Origin of Cosmic Rays” just published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement, Richard Lingenfelter shows how the elemental composition of these relativistic nuclei solves the century old puzzle of the sources and processes of their generation. Studies of their plasma properties have long shown that supernova shocks were their most likely sources, but not what produced their unique mix, nor how their ions are injected into these accelerating shocks. Recent combined abundance measurements and calculations now probe their nuclear, atomic and even solid state processes that answer those questions. They reveal that the cosmic ray mass mixing ratio of supernova ejecta and interstellar medium swept up by these shocks directly define the peak acceleration time. Moreover, in that mix fast grain sputtering injection of suprathermal ions preferentially into those accelerating shocks greatly enriches their composition in heavier elements. This at last matches their unique abundance and reveals even more. Read More

Graduate student Chihchun "Dino" Hsu has been the 2019-2020 Carol and George Lattimer Award for Graduate Excellence. The Lattimer Award honors outstanding graduate students in UCSD’s Division of Physical Sciences who seek interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving and have a strong commitment to education, mentorship, and service. Read More

Professor Keres is among the world’s most influential researchers in their fields. The Web of Science Group (Clarivate Analytics), which provides insights and analytics on research trends, compiled its 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list of more than 6,000 scientists from around the world whose studies were among the top one percent of most-cited publications in their field over the past 11 years. Read More

Despite their feeble interactions, neutrinos finally go big league and get recognized by UCSD news!
The article highlights the Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS), an NSF “Hub”, the first of its kind. UCSD/CASS is one of the the three Hub host institutions, UC Berkeley and the University of Washington being the other two. Check out the N3AS website. For the UCSD News Article: Read More

Prof. Coil and collaborators explore the influence of galactic winds from a distant galaxy called Makani. Here is the Nature article. For the UCSD News article: Read More

Galitzki, a CASS postdoctoral scholar, volunteers for the Fleet Science Center’s popular “Two Scientists Walk into a Bar” events, answering people’s questions about space as best he can. He also helps organize “Astronomy on Tap San Diego,” where researchers give talks and engage with the public at a local brewery. Additionally, he often sets up his own personal telescope at these events and a line instantly forms. He is also a member of the League of Extraordinary Scientists and Engineers, which brings science experiments to local schools. Read More

The first director of CASS, Professor Emeritus Margaret Burbidge turns 100 years old. Check out this video. Read More

The Simons Foundation of New York is giving UC San Diego $20 million to operate the Simons Observatory, a collection of four telescopes that will be placed in Chile’s Atamaca Desert to explore what the universe was like shortly after the Big Bang. The gift increases the foundation’s total support for the observatory project to $80 million, making it among the larger philanthropic gifts of its kind. Read More

Prof. Brian Keating is one of three recipients of the Seventh Annual Excellence in Stewardship award. Prof. Keating demonstrates excellence in stewardship when engaging with our community of supporters.

Exemplary stewardship ensures that our supporters -- donors, volunteers, and corporate and foundation partners -- understand the significance of their involvement with UC San Diego. In addition to expressing gratitude, excellent stewardship cultivates meaningful relationships to advance the university's intellectual, physical, and cultural growth.

The Excellence in Stewardship awards are presented by the Trustees of the UC San Diego Foundation. The honorees will be recognized on June 6th at the annual UC San Diego Foundation Dinner. Congratulations, Prof. Keating! Read More

Heising-Simons Foundation helps boost participation of women scientists as part of new initiative in the Division of Physical Sciences. Read More

Prof. Alison Coil has been selected as a recipient of the 2018/19 Distinguished Teaching Award for Academic Senate Members.

The Distinguished Teaching Award is a prestigious award bestowed upon up to five members of the Academic Senate, three non-Senate faculty members, and three graduate students at UC San Diego each year. The Distinguished Teaching Award was created because UC San Diego faculty recognize the important role excellent teaching plays at the University. This Award is a tangible expression of UC San Diego's commitment to excellence in teaching and to ensuring that this commitment is maintained. The Committee on Distinguished Teaching seeks to select those who exhibit creativity, innovative teaching methods, the ability to motivate students to actively seek out knowledge, and an extraordinary level of teaching commitment. Congratulations, Prof. Coil!

Alison Coil discusses this first image of a black hole with KUSI-TV. Read More

A new CNBC video on SpaceX and Elon Musk examines the company and space travel, and asks questions about the diversity of the SpaceX workforce and whether solving climate change on Earth should be a higher priority than colonizing Mars. Read More

Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance," but today quantum entanglement is poised to revolutionize technology from computers to cryptography. NOVA follows a unique experiment in the Canary Islands to use quasars at opposite ends of the universe to push back alternative explanations for entanglement to the beginning of time. Join us for a screening of the PBS NOVA documentary "Einstein's Quantum Riddle," hosted by UC San Diego's Andrew Friedman, one of the collaborators on the project, followed by a panel discussion. Moderated by UCSD CASS Prof. Brian Keating, associate director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, Friedman will be joined by Jason Gallicchio (Professor of Physics, Harvey Mudd College) and David Brin (physicist and Hugo & Nebula-winning author). Monday, March 4 2019, 6-8p, Atkinson Auditorium, UC San Diego. Free and open to the public. Please RSVP here. Read More

Adam Burgasser and Jon Rees contributed to the discovery of a white dwarf with an unusual debris disk orbiting it. The system, LSPM J0207+3331, was originally identified by citizen scientist Melina Thévenot of Germany working through the Backyward Worlds/Planet 9 Project. The discovery was reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters today. Read More

Chris Theissen, a postdoctoral scholar at UCSD, has been awarded both NASA Sagan and NSF Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2019. The Sagan is one of the most prestigious postdoctoral awards in Astronomy, with an oversubscription rate of 16:1. Chris will be conducting his fellowship work with Prof. Quinn Konopacky.

Angela Berti, CASS/Physics Graduate Student, has been selected as a 2019 Bouchet Scholar. Named for the first African American doctoral recipient in the United States (in Physics from Yale University in 1876), the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society recognizes outstanding scholarly achievement and promotes diversity and excellence in doctoral education and the professoriate.

Five UC San Diego Bouchet Scholars were selected from among an outstanding group of nominees — Angela was the only one from Physics — , all of whom demonstrated a commitment to the tenets of the society. The Bouchet Scholars will be invited to attend the annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education April 5-6, 2019 where they will be inducted into the society. Congratulations, Angela!

PBS NOVA is airing a documentary, "Einstein's Quantum Riddle" about the cosmic Bell experiment where CASS Assistant Research Scientist Andrew Friedman and collaborators tested fundamental questions about quantum entanglement with astronomical observations in the Canary Islands (S46 E2). It premiers Wed Jan 9 at 9pm on local PBS stations. Here is a teaser trailer. It is currently streaming for free on the PBS NOVA Website, and for $3 on Amazon Prime. The DVD can also be purchased from Amazon or NOVA. Read More

Professor Coil is among the world’s most influential researchers in their fields. Clarivate Analytics, which provides insights and analytics on research trends, compiled its 2018 Highly Cited Researchers list of more than 6,000 scientists from around the world whose studies were among the top one percent of most-cited publications in their field over the past 10 years. Read More

The cosmic Bell test experiment which used astronomical observations of quasars to help test quantum entanglement was recently featured in an article for Symmetry Magazine and as the cover story for this week's issue of New Scientist Magazine. Read More

Awash in money, UC San Diego enjoys a golden age in research. Read More

Professor Brian Keating’s book, Losing the Nobel Prize, has been selected as one of Amazon’s 20 Best Science Books of 2018. Read More

As a scientist who observes distant galaxies and black holes both far and near, Shelley Wright noticed an important gap in space—right on the grounds of the University of California San Diego. A proponent of teaching and training students through the observation of the night sky, Wright realized that it was time the university featured its own portable planetarium. Read More

The Hawaiian Supreme Court ruled Oct. 30 to support the construction permit of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea. According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the telescope would be the biggest and most expensive in the Northern Hemisphere. It would also be one of three huge prospective telescopes that could transform astronomy in the 21st century. UC San Diego astrophysicist Shelley Wright is the Project Scientist for TMT’s first light instrument, IRIS. Read More

CASS Assistant Research Scientist Andrew Friedman's work testing quantum theory using light from distant quasars to choose measurement settings in an entanglement test has been featured as an Editors Suggestion in Physical Review Letters. See press releases from UCSD, MIT, Vienna IQOQI, and Harvey Mudd College. Also see other news coverage from Space.com, Motherboard (Vice), Gizmodo, and Physics World. Read More

Professors Alison Coil and Karin Sandstrom are each a recipient of the 2017 UC San Diego Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Award. The awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, March 1, 2018 from 1:30-3:00 pm, in the Price Center West Ballroom. All are welcome to attend.

Alison Coil has been appointed to the newly created position of Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Division of Physical Sciences.

Professor Coil has extensive experience related to equity, diversity, and inclusion issues at UC San Diego. She created and leads the Graduate Women in Physics group, chaired Excellence Through Diversity faculty hires in Physics for four consecutive years, and was an integral force in more than doubling the representation of women faculty in Physics in the last decade. Professor Coil has served on multiple campus-wide efforts related to equity, diversity, and inclusion and was awarded a University-wide Diversity award in 2010. She has served as the Faculty Equity Advisor for the Division of Physical Sciences since 2014, where she has taken an active role in mentoring and advocating for women and underrepresented minority faculty in the division. She currently chairs the Divisional Excellence Committee, related to inclusion in faculty hiring, and co-chairs the Task Force on the Status of Women in the Division of Physical Sciences.

Congratulations, Professor Coil!

Carl Melis, CASS Associate Research Scientist and co-author of the paper says, "the result concerns a nearby, dusty star that has been considered as both being young with possible terrestrial-like planet building ongoing and as old with possible companion disruption. Our work demonstrates the youth of this source through X-ray and optical observations and also the existence of significant quantities of gas orbiting with the dust. We conclude that this young star is likely in the process of consuming a close-orbiting gas-giant planet." Read More

Andy Weir, author of 'The Martian', as part of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination with Prof. Brian Keating and CASS Scientist Andy Freidman. Read More

Latest findings increase understanding of how powerful winds generated by super- massive black holes impact growth of a galaxy. Read More

UC San Diego has begun designing a powerful telescope that will be placed in Chile’s Atacama Desert to search for “ancient light” that could help explain how the universe arose from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
The $10 million telescope will be the largest of five instruments that are being developed as part of the Simons Observatory, which will be located on a high, arid plateau that’s well-suited for searching the cosmos. Read More

On behalf of collaborators at institutions worldwide, the University of California San Diego recently signed a contract for the design and construction of a state-of-the-art millimeter wave telescope for the Simons Observatory. The telescope is the first of several which will be located in the high Atacama Desert of Northern Chile in 2020. Read More

Assistant Professor of Physics Quinn Konopacky has been named a UCSD Hellman Faculty Fellow for 2017-18. The Hellman Fellows Program annually awards funding to recognize faculty who show capacity for great distinction in their research and academic work, and is intended to support activities that will enhance their progress towards tenure. Congratulations, Professor Konopacky! Read More

Jérémy Chastenet has been appointed as a Postdoctoral Scholar in CASS effective October 16th. Dr. Chastenet is under the supervision of Prof. Karin Sandstrom. His research activities include studying the properties of dust in nearby galaxies using observations from the Herschel Space Observatory and the WISE All-Sky survey. Welcome aboard, Dr. Chastenet!

Mikhail Malkov has been elected a 2017 Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) by the APS Council of Representatives upon the recommendation of the Division of Plasma Physics (DPP). The number of APS Fellows elected each year is limited to no more than one half of one percent of the membership. It is a prestigious recognition by their peers of their outstanding contributions to physics. Dr. Malkov is being recognized for his ground-breaking contributions to the theory of charged particle acceleration by collisionless shocks, the theory of nonlinear shock acceleration and injection, and the propagation of accelerated particles; for key contributions to modeling the LH transition. Congratulations Mischa!

The Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the development of cryo-electron microscopy. The latest technical developments that made the recent breakthrough possible was the introduction of new electron detectors in electron microscopy. Early reports on the use of these sensors for the detection of electrons were presented around the mid-2000s, but these sensors had already been used as a tool in studies of charged particles in other research areas, such as astronomy. This sensor work was pioneered by Dr. Xuong of the UCSD Physics department with the support of CASS engineers Fred Dutweiler and Philippe LeBlanc.

Alexander Lowell has been appointed as a Postdoctoral Scholar in CASS effective November 8th. Dr. Lowell is under the supervision of Prof. Steven Boggs and his research activities will involve Compton Spectrometer and Imager gamma rays. Welcome aboard, Dr. Lowell!

Several CASS astronomers traveled far and wide to view today's special eclipse, which was the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in the United States in 99 years. Read More

Jarred Roberts has been appointed as a Postdoctoral Scholar in CASS effective August 14th. Dr. Roberts is under the supervision of Prof. Steven Boggs and his research activities will involve high-energy physics instrumentation development for experiments like the Compton Spectrometer and Imager Explorer (COSI-X) and the General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS). Welcome aboard, Dr. Roberts!

Adam Burgasser -- first author on paper outlining a new study that the TRAPPIST-1 star is quite old: between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years. This is up to twice as old as our own solar system, which formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Read More

Astronomers like to say we are the byproducts of stars, stellar furnaces that long ago fused hydrogen and helium into the elements needed for life through the process of stellar nucleosynthesis.

As the late Carl Sagan once put it: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.”

But what about the heavier elements in the periodic chart, elements such as gold, platinum and uranium?

Astronomers believe most of these “r-process elements”—elements much heavier than iron—were created, either in the aftermath of the collapse of massive stars and the associated supernova explosions, or in the merging of binary neutron star systems.

“A different kind of furnace was needed to forge gold, platinum, uranium and most other elements heavier than iron,” explained George Fuller, a theoretical astrophysicist and professor of physics who directs UC San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. “These elements most likely formed in an environment rich with neutrons.” Read More

Prof. Keres and the FIRE team found that a large fraction of matter in the Milky Way comes from far-flung galaxies. Read More

Sibasish Laha has been appointed as a Postdoctoral Scholar in CASS effective June 1st. Dr. Laha is under the supervision of Dr. Alex Markowitz and his research activities will involve studying how supermassive black holes residing in other galaxies are fueled. He will use observational X-ray data on dozens of gas-accreting black holes to study how matter is transported from the host galaxies. Welcome aboard!

Adam Burgasser was part of an international team which has discovered that one of the closest brown dwarfs to our Sun has the same mass as a giant planet. It's called SIMP J013656.5+093347, or SIMP0136 for short, and is a well-studied brown dwarf only 21 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Pisces. Read More

Adam Burgasser has been awarded a 2017-2018 Fulbright Scholarship to conduct astrophysical research in the United Kingdom. The Fulbright Program, initiated by Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 and managed by the US Department of State, aims to increase mutual understanding and support of friendly and peaceful relations between people of the US and the people of other countries by awarding exchange grants to US and foreign researchers in over 155 countries. Over 370,000 Fulbright Awards have been awarded since the programs inception, and many have gone on to win Nobel Prizes and become leaders and innovators in scientific research. Adam will be in residence at the University of Exeter investigating cloud formation in the atmospheres of the coolest stars, brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets.

New CASS Assistant Research Scientist Andrew Friedman's work on cosmic tests of fundamental quantum mechanics has been featured as an Editors Suggestion in PRL, and is written up in Forbes, New Scientist, Quanta, and The Atlantic magazines. Here are the articles in Forbes, Quanta, and The Atlantic. For the PRL release: Read More

Andrew Friedman has been appointed as an Assistant Research Scientist in CASS, effective March 1st. Welcome aboard!

Mojegan Azadi and Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi have been selected to be members of the UC San Diego Chapter of the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society for 2017. Their nominations demonstrate their exemplification of the characteristics of Edward A. Bouchet: Character, Leadership, Advocacy, Service, and Scholarly Achievement. Congratulations! Read More

Adam Burgasser is part of an international team that discovered a record-setting seven-planet system around a very low-mass, low-temperature star called TRAPPIST-1. All seven planets are roughly Earth-sized, and three reside in the star's habitable zone. Read More

Congratulations to Quinn Konopacky, Assistant Professor of Physics, for being nominated to receive a 2016 UCSD Diversity Award!

The annual Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Awards Program honors staff, faculty, students, departments, and organizational units or groups that make outstanding contributions in the areas of equal opportunity, affirmative action, diversity, and the UCSD Principles of Community during the year.