Physics & Astronomy

Oct 22, 2019
Irvine, Calif., Oct. 22, 2019 – Svetlana Jitomirskaya, Distinguished Professor of mathematics at the University of California, Irvine, has been named the 2020 winner of the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics. She is only the second woman to receive the annual prize – and the first to receive it alone, not jointly.
Oct 14, 2019
Irvine, Calif., Oct. 14, 2019 – Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a new scanning transmission electron microscopy method that enables visualization of the electric charge density of materials at sub-angstrom resolution.
Sep 9, 2019
The Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies under the Division of Plasma Physics awarded Liu Chen, UCI Professor Physics & Astronomy, the 2019 S. Chandrasekhar Prize of Plasma Physics. This award is given to an outstanding scientist in the field of plasma physics as a basis for astrophysics or fusion research, and plasma applications.
Sep 3, 2019
The Feenberg Memorial Medal serves to preserve the memory of the unique and enduring contributions of Eugene Feenberg to physics, especially to the foundations of nuclear physics and the microscopic quantum many-body physics of nuclei and quantum fluids.
Aug 29, 2019
In the Davis Mountains of far west Texas, at the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, astronomers spend their nights peering at the stars through some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Soon they’ll be adding a more down-to-Earth job. Within sight of the giant domes, NASA is installing a sprawling network of equipment to help researchers study planetary change.
Aug 19, 2019
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 19, 2019 -- The American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced astronomer Virginia Trimble has been selected to receive the 2019 Andrew Gemant Award, an annual prize recognizing contributions to the cultural, artistic and humanistic dimension of physics.
Aug 15, 2019
I write with a heavy heart to share that Physics & Astronomy Ph.D. student José Flores Velázquez was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting last night near his family home in Los Angeles. This is a tremendous loss for his family, friends, community and all of us here at UC Irvine and beyond.
Aug 8, 2019
In the late 20th century, it started to become clear to astronomers that every big galaxy in the Universe has a supermassive black hole in its center. These are not like the ones that form when massive stars explode, which have a few times the Sun's mass. These are soul-crushing monsters, with millions or billions of times the Sun's mass.
Aug 7, 2019
What happens inside a black hole stays inside a black hole, but what happens inside a black hole’s “sphere of influence” – the innermost region of a galaxy where a black hole’s gravity is the dominant force – is of intense interest to astronomers and can help determine the mass of a black hole as well as its impact on its galactic neighborhood.
Aug 7, 2019
What happens inside a black hole stays inside a black hole, but what happens inside a black hole’s “sphere of influence” – the innermost region of a galaxy where a black hole’s gravity is the dominant force – is of intense interest to astronomers and can help determine the mass of a black hole as well as its impact on its galactic neighborhood.
Jul 26, 2019
Professors Eric Rignot, Tim Tait and Jenny Yang have been named recipients of the 2019 Academic Senate awards for research making the UCI School of Physical Sciences the only school on campus to win awards in the research category.
Jul 25, 2019
You may think the greatest, most perplexing mysteries of the universe exist way out there, at the edge of a black hole, or inside an exploding star. No, great mysteries of the universe surround us, all the time. They even permeate us, sailing straight through our bodies. One such mystery is cosmic rays, made of tiny bits of atoms. These rays, which are passing through us at this very moment, are not harmful to us or any other life on the surface of Earth.