Physics & Astronomy

Stars, galaxies, planets, pretty much everything that makes up our everyday lives owes its existence to a cosmic quirk.

We are getting closer to understanding why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter. It may be all down to how neutrinos change flavours.

Scientists on Wednesday announced that they were perhaps one step closer to understanding why the universe contains something rather than nothing.

Coronavirus is affecting everyone, and our School is no exception. This piece is one of a series of snapshots about the people of the School and how they’re doing during the pandemic.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed life as we know it with tremendous impact to our work, our homes, families and everything in between. With so many changes, staying motivated and connected to research interests is hard! Through the Physical Sciences #UCIReignite campaign we hope to spur our research community to reconnect with their passion for science. 

For work, Francisco Mercado spends his days thinking about stars and metals. He usually does his thinking at UCI in Frederick Reines Hall where he works during the week as a third-year graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. But when there’s a pandemic, Mercado can do his work just as well at home where he lives in the Campus Village. Mercado’s an astrophysicist who studies how metals distribute themselves in faraway galaxies, and since he does all his work on a computer,…

When Katy Rodriguez Wimberly came to UCI in the fall of 2016 to start her PhD in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, she came straight from a summer program offered by the university called “Competitive Edge.” The program gave her six weeks to get to know UCI, and to meet faculty and fellow grad students who gave her tips on how to do well in the years to come. The connections she made that summer helped her feel like she belonged in grad school, and that she was a part of the UCI…

We know it’s there, but we don’t know what it is: this invisible stuff is dark matter. Scientists are fairly certain it dominates the cosmos, yet its ingredients are unclear. For a while astrophysicists have been excited by two potential signals of dark matter in space: an unexplained excess of gamma-ray light in the center of the Milky Way and a mysterious spike in x-ray light spotted in some other galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Rebecca Riley remembers feeling drawn to the stars since she was less than three years old, when she — and this is her first memory — would go outside with her grandparents in Clay County, Alabama and lay on a blanket and watch the night sky.

Come July 1, Stephanie Sallum will become a new assistant professor of astronomy in the Physics and Astronomy Department. She comes to UCI from her postdoctoral position at UC Santa Cruz with plans to capture, along with a team of other researchers, direct images of exoplanets that are still forming around distant stars.

In February, Virginia Trimble, an astronomer in the UCI Department of Physics and Astronomy, became a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). This is the first time in its 121-year history that the AAS has given fellowships of any kind to its members, and, through its Legacy Fellows, the society is shining a light on members who sculpted astronomy into the field it is today.

In physical sciences, we celebrate #InternationalWomensDay and #WomensHistoryMonth. Here are a few inspirational women with pioneering research in our school: