This article originally appeared in @THEU “Would you consider Tony Hawk a physicist?” “I would consider Tony Hawk a physicist. If nothing else, he’s an intuitive scientist, right?” It looks like magic. When skateboarders launch off the lip of a vert ramp to fly into flips and spins, it appears they’re defying gravity. In fact, these […]
Read MoreThis Article originally appeared in @THEU Intro adapted from a Northwestern article written by Amanda Morris. In October 2022, an international team of researchers, including University of Utah astrophysicist Tanmoy Laskar, observed the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded, GRB 221009A. Now, physicists have confirmed that the phenomenon responsible for the historic burst—dubbed the B.O.A.T. (“brightest […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU In September 2021, an unprecedented thunderstorm blew across Utah’s West Desert. Lightning from this storm produced at least six gamma ray flashes that beamed downward to Earth’s surface and activated detectors at the University of Utah-led Telescope Array. The storm was noteworthy on its own—the array usually clocks one […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU In 1991, the University of Utah Fly’s Eye experiment detected the highest-energy cosmic ray ever observed. Later dubbed the Oh-My-God particle, the cosmic ray’s energy shocked astrophysicists. Nothing in our galaxy had the power to produce it, and the particle had more energy than was theoretically possible for cosmic […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU & Adapted from NASA Webb Space Telescope. “We only know of a handful of kilonovas with any certainty, and this is only the second one for which we have such detailed spectral information” said Tanmoy Laskar, assistant professor at the University of Utah, of the first detection of we have of […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU The High Energy and Particle Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS) held its award ceremony at their annual conference on August 21, 2023, where they honored the field’s most influential research projects. The SDSS/BOSS/eBOSS collaboration won the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize for an outstanding contribution to […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on College of Science & @THEU Adapted from a release by Out to Innovate. The U physicist was one of three winners of the 2023 Out to Innovate Awards that recognizes outstanding achievement by LGBTQ+ people in STEM. Out to Innovate is proud to announce the winners of its 2023 recognition […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU Adapted from a release by Lauren Biron, science writer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Taken during the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s “early validation” phase, the data include distant galaxies and quasars as well as stars in our own Milky Way. The universe is big, and it’s getting bigger. To […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU On April 21, the sun released huge coronal mass ejection (CME). Magnetic fields pulsed across the surface of the sun’s southern hemisphere; hurling charged particles toward our planet. Two days later in the nighttime hours of April 23, the particles hit Earth’s atmosphere and treated Utah’s skies to […]
Read MoreThis page originally appeared on @THEU Adapted from a release by Francis Reddy, senior science writer for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. On Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022, a pulse of intense gamma-ray radiation swept through our solar system, saturating detectors on numerous spacecraft and sending astronomers across the world scurrying to train their fastest and […]
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