News and Events
UCL team develops laser accelerator for neutral particles
Precise control of the motion of atoms and molecules is extremely
difficult, yet important for a large spectrum of scientific and industrial
processes. Applications range from surface growth and deposition, to elucidating
the details of chemical reactions through controlled collisions.
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UCL Business Award Winners
Professor Neal Skipper and
Dr Chris Howard, members of the Condensed Matter and Materials Physics group (CMMP), have won the UCL Business Award ‘One to Watch’ 2012.
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First instrument for the JWST completed and handed over to NASA
After
more than ten years of work by over 200 engineers, the Mid InfraRed
Instrument (MIRI), a camera so sensitive it could see a candle on one of
Jupiter’s moons, has been declared ready for delivery by the European Space
Agency and NASA. The MIRI Optical System, an instrument for the James Webb
Space Telescope (JWST) that will eventually take up a position four times
further away from the Earth than the Moon. It will now be shipped to NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center where it will be integrated with the other three
instruments and the telescope. More...
Manipulation of high-voltage spinel brings the possibility of developing Li-ion batteries one step closer
High-voltage spinel LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 is considered to be one of the most promising cathode materials for Li-ion batteries that can be deployed in hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. To improve the cyclability and eliminate the impurities in the spinel, one of the commonly adopted approaches is to partially substitute Ni and/or Mn with elements, such as Ti, Fe, Cr, Ru, and Mg. More...
RAS Keith Runcorn Prize for 2011 awarded to Dr David Kipping
Dr David Kipping is the 2011 recipient of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) Keith Runcorn Prize for the best doctoral thesis in Geophysics.
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Prof Gabriel Aeppli elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Prof Gabriel
Aeppli, UCL Quain Professor and Director of the London Centre for
Nanotechnology has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
& Sciences.
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Herschel sees dusty disc of crushed comets
Astronomers using ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory have
studied a ring of dust around the nearby star Fomalhaut and have deduced that
it is created by the collision of thousands of comets every day. More...
Statistics for Physical Sciences: An Introduction- out now!
Statistics for Physical Sciences is a short but systematic guide to the ideas and techniques physical scientists encounter in statistical analysis. It combines detailed discussions of a wide range of practical methods with brief descriptions of their theoretical origins, and presents useful formulas
and a mathematical account of statistics - all while developing the subject in a logical way. More...
Listen: "Not just the Higgs Boson", Prof. Jon Butterworth on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme
Professor Jon Butterworth discusses the search for the Higgs boson and plans at CERN beyond this with John Humphreys and Paddy Regan on the
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme
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Listen: Searching through the stars for new planets
Dr Giovanna Tinetti, PhD student Ingo Waldmann and Prof. Jonathan Tennyson FRS talk to Adam Smith at the Pod Academy about their work on exoplanets and NASA’s Kepler mission More...
First direct evidence of cavitating Langmuir turbulence occurring naturally in any space or astrophysical plasma
Radar observations of the Earth's aurora reveal, for
the first time ever, the natural and spontaneous formation of warm, low
density 'bubbles' of plasma in the ionosphere: the hallmark of strong
Langmuir turbulence. This process has previously been observed only in
an artificial context: the driving effects of high-frequency radio waves
emitted by powerful transmitters used in ionospheric modification
experiments.
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World’s Best Measurement of W Boson Mass
The CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider has released a new measurement of the mass of the W boson that is, by some margin, the most precise in the world. The new measurement by CDF, M(W) = 80387 +/- 19 MeV/c2, has a smaller uncertainty than all the previous measurements combined, and is the result of several years' painstaking work by physicists including a team from UCL. When combined with a new measurement from the D0 experiment, also announced this week, the combined data give a result 80387 +- 17 MeV/c2 , which has a precision of 0.02 percent. More...
In Memoriam: Dr Godfrey 'George' Heyland
George Heyland, who died on 6 February 2012 aged 89, was one of the longest serving members of the Physics and Astronomy Department at UCL. More...
Watch: Prof. Ofer Lahav discusses Dark Energy with The Economist
Prof. Ofer Lahav (Astrophysics) is head of the Dark Energy Survey science programme. In this interview for The Economist, he discusses the rapidly expanding universe and the future of dark-energy research. More...
Planck steps closer to the cosmic blueprint
ESA’s Planck mission has revealed that our Galaxy contains previously undiscovered islands of cold gas and a mysterious haze of microwaves.
These results give scientists new treasure to mine and take them closer
to revealing the blueprint of cosmic structure.
The new
results are being presented this week at an international conference in
Bologna, Italy, where astronomers from around the world are discussing
the mission’s intermediate results.
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Carbon and oxygen at extremes
Dr Miguel Martinez-Canales and Prof. Chris Pickard (CMMP), with co-workers, have revealed the fate of the vital elements carbon and oxygen when subjected to the extremes of pressure encountered in giant planets and stars. More...
Faculty Postgraduate Prize Winners 2011
Many congratulations to David Kipping, winner of the 2011 Faculty Postgraduate Research Prize, and to Marian Breuer, winner of the 2011 Faculty Postgraduate Taught Prize. More...
Stargazing Live
Dr Giovanna Tinetti (Astrophysics Group) talks about the exoplanet Kepler-22b, and how we can look for signs of life on distant planets. More...
Dr Hiranya Peiris recipient of 2012 RAS Fowler Prize for Early Achievement in Astronomy
Dr Hiranya Peiris, a member of the Astrophysics group, has been awarded the 2012 Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) Fowler Prize for Early Achievement in Astronomy. More...
ERC Advanced Grant Award for Prof. Ofer Lahav
Professor Ofer Lahav, a member of the Astrophysics group, is one of five UCL members of staff to have been awarded a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant Award.
The project will look at ‘Testing the Dark Energy Paradigm and Measuring Neutrino Mass
with the Dark Energy Survey'. It is due to commence on 1 May 2012 and is worth 2.4M Euro.
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UCL scientist goes from Lab Bench to Backbench
Dr Nguyen TK Thanh has taken part in a scheme where MPs and Civil Servants are paired up with leading scientists for a week at both their respective places of work. More...
Groundbreaking EMMA results could revolutionise cancer therapy
The EMMA (Electron Model for Many Applications) accelerator is a prototype for a brand new type of
particle accelerator that will massively impact fundamental science by changing
the way such accelerators across the
world are designed and built in the future. The paper reports
the first experimental results from EMMA, confirming the proof of principle
underlying its technology. More...
The Hunt for Higgs: A Horizon Special
On Monday 9 Jan 2012 Head of Department, Prof Jon Butterworth and Research Associate Adam Davison appeared on the BBC 2 Horizon programme 'The Hunt for Higgs: A Horizon Special'. The programme focused on the Higgs particle and why it is significant. More...
A large Scale Helical Magnetic Field in OMC-1
The role that magnetic fields play in star formation is still a matter of debate. The observed star formation rate is slower than expected from free-fall gravitational collapse. Supersonic turbulence and strong magnetic fields are the two main candidates proposed to regulate star formation, but it remains unclear from observations which mechanism dominates over the other one in supporting the cloud against collapse. More...
Band alignment, built-in potential and the absence of conductivity at the LaCrO3/SrTiO3(001) heterojunction
In order to advance
microelectronic technologies, scientists and engineers are on the lookout for
new semiconductor materials that can be used to control the flow of electrons
in nanoscale devices. One of the promising directions is to exploit interfaces
of so-called non-polar and polar oxides. The former are composed of neutral
atomic planes, while in the latter the atomic planes have alternating charge.
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Events
IoP AMIG Summer Meeting 2012
UCL will host the Institute of Physics (IoP) Atomic and Molecular Interactions
Group (AMIG) on the 28 and 29 June 2012.
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Science Lectures for Schools
Weekly event during term time More...
University of London Observatory (ULO) Open Days
Bi-monthly event, October - March
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