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Gravitational Waves

August 16, 2023

Gravitational waves thrum through the cosmos

Last June dozens of astronomy enthusiasts gathered on the University of Utah campus to watch a live stream of a mysterious announcement. For weeks prior, scientists on Twitter, TikTok and IRL were abuzz with anticipation, awaiting results from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves’ (NANOGrav) 15 years’ worth of data.

 

NANOGrav confirmed what had long been suspected—gravitational waves are thrumming throughout the universe, emitting a low-pitched symphony that distorts the fabric of space and time.

 Tanmoy Laskar, assistant professor at the U’s Department of Physics & Astronomy thought of organizing the watch party to share in the excitement and discuss the results with the U community. He spoke with @TheU to explain the announcement.

Why is the astrophysics community so excited about the announcement?

This is very exciting because our current astrophysics and cosmology theories tell us that the universe should be full of these gravitational waves and, with these new results, the evidence for the existence of such a gravitational wave background just got much, much stronger. Furthermore, multiple global teams published their own, independent data sets on the same day and each team finds strong evidence for the presence of this gravitational wave background, which means that this signal is very likely real.

An amphitheater with dozens of people face towards a pull-down screen with the NSF and NANOGrav logo on it.

PHOTO CREDIT: TANMOY LASKAR

A live stream watch party for the NANOGrav announcement at the U.

 DOWNLOAD FULL-RES IMAGE

How did the collaboration detect the gravitational waves?


Gravitational waves are essentially a small stretch and squeeze in space and time. This means that if we want to detect a gravitational wave going by, we need to measure small perturbations to the distance between free-floating masses or to the time difference between two freely falling clocks. But the gravitational wave background that was the focus of the new studies involves waves with extremely long wavelengths—dozens of light years. This means to detect them we need clocks or masses separated by similar distances.

To navigate this, NANOGrav and their sister experiments used a technique called pulsar timing. Pulsars are rapidly spinning, very dense stars packing the mass of our sun into the size of a small city. They were discovered in 1967 by Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell as extraterrestrial objects producing regular radio pulses. The radio pulses from pulsars tend to be extremely regular because they behave similar to lighthouses. If you look at a lighthouse from the shore, its rotating beam of light flashes towards you at regular intervals. In the same way, pulsars appear as regular radio pulses seen when their lighthouse-like radio beams periodically sweep past Earth.

Astronomers realized that an array of pulsars spread across our galaxy could be used as a network of clocks. By timing the arrival of the pulses from these pulsars, one could look out for passing gravitational waves that would disrupt the timing of radio pulses that would usually arrive like clockwork. Tracking a large number of pulsars for disruptions is much more reliable. The idea is that if a gravitational wave goes through, then not only will there will be offsets in the time of arrival of the pulses from each pulsar from their expected times, such effects will be correlated in a predictable fashion between different pulsars depending on each pulsar’s direction and distance from Earth.

Of course a lot of different effects still need to be accounted for, including the motion of the Earth and planets in the Solar System and the slowing down of each pulsar as it slowly loses energy. Not to mention the fact that these gravitational waves have wavelengths that correspond to several Earth years, meaning that the observations need to be collected for over a decade to make a discovery!

To read the full interview with Lisa Potter visit @TheU. 

What the inspiration for ‘Treetop Barbie’ thought of the ‘Barbie’ movie

August 15, 2023

What the inspiration for ‘Treetop Barbie’ thought of the ‘Barbie’ movie

The canopy scientist (a.k.a. "TreeTop Barbie") and emerita professor of biology at the University of Utah talks about her unusual connection to the iconic doll.

 

Margot Robbie in Barbie. PHOTO: JAAP BUITENDIJK/WARNER BROS.

Nalini Nadkarni, professor emerita of biology at the University of Utah, recently took a trip to the Pacific Northwest — a combined trip for research, visiting friends and making her annual solo backpacking adventure.

There was one more item on Nadkarni’s agenda: Seeing “Barbie,” the hit movie by director Greta Gerwig, based on the long-popular Mattel doll.

“Generally, I felt that it provoked reflections on how we see ourselves and each other; how difficult (perhaps impossible!) it is to define ourselves; and the importance of providing models and choices about our future, without encumbering them with expectations,” Nadkarni wrote in an email. “I felt that many of these messages were presented in the film – not always neatly and coherently, but then, defining oneself is never neat or coherent.”

For Nadkarni, a pioneer in the field of studying the canopies of forests, the connection to a 12-inch plastic figure may not be obvious. It helps to know that when the “Barbie” movie marketing says “she’s everything,” Nadkarni is one of the people who helped make that literally true.

Two decades ago, Nadkarni proposed to Mattel that they create “Treetop Barbie” — a doll with the job of a canopy scientist, a relatively new field at the time. Like Nadkarni, this Barbie would be equipped with the tools necessary to research in the highest part of the forests.

Two decades ago, Nadkarni proposed to Mattel that they create “Treetop Barbie” — a doll with the job of a canopy scientist, a relatively new field at the time. Like Nadkarni, this Barbie would be equipped with the tools necessary to research in the highest part of the forests.

Read the entire article in the Salt Lake Tribune. 

 

How Magma is stored beneath Yellowstone

August 9, 2023

How magma is stored beneath yellowstone

Data from a major deployment of seismometers in 2020 is revealing new insights into the characteristics of the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone caldera, including how melt is distributed in the reservoir.

 

Jamie Farrell

Over the past few years, several new insights into the character of Yellowstone’s magma reservoir have been published. These results are largely based on seismic data—particularly on the variable speed of seismic waves in the subsurface.

Seismic waves record information about the subsurface structure and composition as they pass through the earth. From the seismic source to receiver, the travel time can be used to determine how fast the wave propagates. Hot or partially melted rock slows down the wave propagation in comparison to solid rock, so seismic waves that move more slowly than expected might indicate the presence of hot or molten material. A single source-to-receiver travel time measurement, however, only provides the average information along the wave path. It is therefore difficult to accurately characterize underground areas that can be extremely variable and complex—for example, beneath a volcano. More data are needed. Just like a digital camera, where more megapixels give you a better image, more seismic data provide better resolution of what the subsurface looks like.

Fan-Chi Lin

The current seismic network in Yellowstone is maintained by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and consists of about 40 stations. The network not only detects earthquakes, but also offers important opportunities to probe the structure of the subsurface. Scientists have used seismic wave speeds from earthquakes occurring around Yellowstone and even hundreds of miles away to depict the current magmatic system beneath Yellowstone caldera, which consists of two reservoirs stacked atop one another—one containing viscous rhyolite magma at depths of 5–19 km (about 3–12 mi), and a second holding more fluid basaltic magma at 20–50 km (about 12–30 mi) beneath the surface. Based on seismic wave speeds, the melt fraction in the total reservoir system is less than 10% overall, assuming the liquid phase of the material (melt) is broadly distributed within the solid rock matrix. The upper reservoir contains more melt—perhaps up to 20% based on the most recent estimates—than the lower reservoir, but both are mostly solid.  This image, however, provides no information regarding the texture of the reservoir, or how melt might be stored—for example, evenly distributed, all in one place, or in small pods.

The University of Utah, in collaboration with the University of New Mexico and Yellowstone National Park, attempted to address this knowledge gap with a temporary deployment of hundreds of seismic sensors across the region. The field campaign was conducted from August to September 2020, when around 650 autonomous seismic sensors, or “nodes,” were set up along roads and trails. These are the same types of sensors that have been used to study the dynamics of Old Faithful and Steamboat Geysers. The 2020 seismic array was designed to passively record seismic waves generated by the ocean, known as microseisms. Although the energy from microseisms is small, it is detectable by modern seismometers even very far from the coast and has characteristics that make it ideal for studying the crustal structure beneath Yellowstone.

Read the entire article posted by Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Sin-Mei Wu, seismologist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jamie Farrell and Fan-Chi Lin, seismologists with the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah.

 

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Shared Resistance in Breast Cancer Cells

August 4, 2023

Shared resistance in breast cancer cells

 

 

“Cancer cells are often thought of as maverick cells that break the rules and by doing so end up damaging or even killing their host,” says University of Utah professor Fred Adler. “But cancer cells in fact continue to depend on other cells in their environment to survive, particularly under the intense stress we place them under with drug treatment.”

In a recent paper in which Adler is co-author, a team of researchers has determined that while cancer healthcare has been successful in the short term with modern drugs that fight cancer with fewer side effects, long-term success has proven elusive. “Many patients have cancers that recur because some cancer cells evolve resistance to treatment and can resume growth,” he says.

In the study, the team found the surprising result that resistance in breast cancer cells can be shared.


Biting the hand

Fred Adler. Banner Photo Above: Battle, love-fest, or dysfunctional relationship? Mixed culture of sensitive and resistant cancer cells marked with two different colors working through their complex issues with the help of mathematical therapists

In the most common type of breast cancer, treatments almost always target the estrogen pathways that promote growth. And while combinations with modern targeted therapies have proven effective in controlling some cancers, the researchers tested what happens when cells evolve resistance to this combination therapy. “We find, as expected,” continues Adler who has joint appointments in the Department of Mathematics and the School of Biological Sciences where, currently, he is also director, “that these cells are able to grow with combination therapy, unlike their inexperienced drug sensitive cousins. However, we were quite surprised that this resistance is shared with the sensitive cells through over-production of estrogen which enables growth in the presence of treatment. The sensitive cells turn around and ‘bite the hand that feeds them’ by outcompeting the resistance cells.”

Both positive and negative interactions between drug-sensitive and resistant cells can influence the effectiveness of treatment in breast cancer cell populations. Adler and his colleagues have found that the interplay of those interactions in populations that feature differences between cancer cells — both within a single tumor or differences between a primary (original) tumor and a secondary tumor — are especially determinative.

The paper which published June 29th in the journal Nature Communications details how researchers studied interactions between estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cell lineages that are sensitive and resistant to ribociclib, a kinase inhibitor that blocks the action of an abnormal protein that signals cancer cells to multiply and helps slow or stop the spread of cancer cells.

“In mono- and coculture,” the paper reports, “we find that sensitive cells grow and compete more effectively in the absence of treatment.” During treatment with ribociclib, sensitive cells survive and proliferate better when grown together with resistant cells than when grown in monoculture, termed in ecology as “facilitation,” defined as when one species positively impacts the fitness of another.

With the use of in-vitro model systems, molecular, protein, and genomic analyses showed that resistant cells increase metabolism and production of estradiol — a highly active estrogen metabolite — and increase estrogen signaling in sensitive cells to promote facilitation in co-culture.


Modeling in the Adler Lab

Adler previewed some of these published results last winter at a College of Science-sponsored Science at Lunch event. Eric Slattery, MD, who attended the event, recognized Adler’s skill at synthesizing and simplifying such a complex subject as the fitful, reactive lives of cancer cells. “Cancer viewed as an ecological system is not only novel but helpful in propelling research forward. [For] a physician, basic science research in this field is critical in advancing patient care.”

The Adler Group with whiteboard, Cottam’s Gulch.

As a mathematician, Adler, along with his lab collaborators, often use mathematical models focused on viruses, including, recently, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. But their interests extend to other subject models where ecology, evolution and immunology meet, including, among others, sea ice, the behavior of Southern Right Whales in Argentina, and combat traits of ants. The notion of “facilitation” in the paper — a term stemming from the literature of ecology — is emblematic of the multi-disciplinary, cross-pollination of different sub-fields and approaches in biology and health sciences that are now converging, in this case in the study of cancer cell populations.

Returning to the recently published findings, Adler says of his team, “We used mathematical models to unravel the complexity of these interactions and could then extend them to show how this can be used to more effectively treat cancers.” It turns out, according to the paper, that this kind of modeling “quantifies the strength of competition and facilitation during CDK4/6 inhibition and predicts that blocking facilitation has the potential to control both resistant and sensitive cancer cell populations… .” That potential, when realized, in turn inhibits the emergence of a refractory population during cell cycle therapy.


Gratuitous as a massacre

The authors remind us that breast cancer is the most common cancer worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer death in American women — “gratuitous as a massacre,” to quote the poet Marilyn Hacker, especially when it leads to mastectomies. “The majority (~80%) of these breast tumors,” the authors report, “are estrogen receptor-positive (ER+), and the majority of metastatic patients who die from their cancer have this breast cancer subtype.”

In these tumors, estrogen receptor activity leads to cancer cell proliferation. In order to target both upstream ER and downstream CDK4/6 signaling for cancer control, the combination of CDK inhibitors with endocrine therapy has been used successfully in metastatic ER+ breast cancer, and to a moderate extent in earlier-stage, non-metastatic breast cancer. However, as the research shows, tumors can develop resistance to both single and combination endocrine and cell cycle therapy regimens. Understanding the underlying causes of resistance to endocrine and cell cycle therapies is a critical area of research for this major cancer subtype and cause of death in women.

Clearly, the stakes are high that therapies and even cures for breast cancers be secured. “If we can encourage drug sensitive cells to take advantage of resistant cells,” says Adler, “we can achieve the dual goal of limiting the cancer and of maintaining drug sensitivity to enable long-term cancer control.”

Contributors to the paper titled “Cell facilitation promotes growth and survival under drug pressure in breast cancer,” include the lead co-authors Rena Emond and Jason I. Griffiths along with Rachel S. Sousa (mathematics, University of Utah) and others. The study was overseen by Beckman Research Institute‘s Andrea Bild.

 

by David Pace

You can read a second story about this research in The Utah Chronicle. 

Sister Cities Panel

August 2, 2023

Wilkes Center hosts climate change panel between Sister City leaders

Addressing climate change on the local level with two international leaders was the focus of a recent panel discussion between Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Matsumoto Mayor Yoshinao Gaun.

The discussion, hosted at the S.J. Quinney College of Law on July 23 by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the University of Utah and the Salt Lake City Department of Economic Development, was part of a weekend of events celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Sister City relationship between Matsumoto, Japan, and Salt Lake City.

Founded in the 1950s by President Dwight Eisenhower, Sister Cities International was formed with the goal of fostering global peace and stability by creating connections between people in different parts of the world. The conversation between the two mayors is an example of how Sister City relationships can provide opportunities for communities from different parts of the world to support each other in finding solutions to the problems they share.

“Rather than taking on this work of addressing climate change as individual cities, we can work together as Salt Lake City and Matsumoto city,” said Gaun through a translator during the panel.

As Salt Lake City experienced three consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees, Mendenhall noted it was a fitting time to discuss the efforts cities were making to address climate change.

“Perhaps there couldn’t be a better day for us to gather here and discuss what great work Salt Lake City is doing and how we can learn more from our Sister City, Matsumoto,” she said. “Because our nation does not have any national climate strategy with specific goals, unlike Japan, which does, our actions at the local level are mighty.”

Read the entire story by Matilyn Mortensen in @TheU.

Listen to National Science Foundation’s recent podcast with Bill Anderegg here.

Vahe Bandarian – 2023 ACS Fellow

August 2, 2023

Vahe Bandarian has been selected as one of the 2023 American Chemical Society (ACS) fellows.

Associate Dean for Student Affairs in the College of Science, Bandarian arrived at the University of Utah in 2015, and his work at the U currently centers on developing molecular level understanding of biosynthesis of complex natural products. Specifically, his lab has reconstituted the key steps in the biosynthesis of the modified transfer RNA base, queuosine, which is found in all kingdoms of life. Future directions in this area will include probing the biological role of this and other ubiquitous RNA modification. Additional new areas of research being initiated will focus on mechanistic studies of enzymes involved in complex radical-mediated transformations.

Bandarian graduated with a B.S. from California State University-Los Angeles in 1992 then went on to get his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998 followed by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan.

ACS began this fellowship tradition in 2009 as a way to recognize and honor ACS members for outstanding achievements and contributions to science. Read more about the American Chemical Society and the 42 selected fellows here.

Originally announced on chem.utah.edu.

William Anderegg Receives Blavatnik Award

July 26, 2023

William Anderegg RECEIVES Blavatnik Award

On July 26, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences announced that Dr. William Anderegg is one of three national laureates to receive the 2023 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. A video announcing Anderegg’s selection for the Blavatnik Award  is available here.

Dr. Anderegg is an associate professor of Biological Sciences at the U and director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. As the 2023 Laureate in Life Sciences, he is being awarded $250,000 for his work on “revealing how trees absorb and release carbon dioxide amidst a changing climate.” This is the largest unrestricted scientific award for America’s most innovative, faculty-ranked scientists and engineers who are under the age of 42.

Anderegg’s recent publications have examined the interaction of plant ecology and climate change, from the scale of cells to forest ecosystems. Specifically, he addresses how drought and climate change affect Earth’s forests and the manifold benefits they bring to society. His work overturns a 50-year foundational theory on how stomata—pores on leaves that facilitate photosynthesis—behave in order to improve carbon gain and minimize water loss, and in turn, how this affects global forests’ response to climate change.

 As a leading voice in the field of climate change, Anderegg’s discoveries are already informing climate solutions, global policies, and public health. He is the first ever winner of the Blavatnik Regional Awards to be awarded the Blavatnik National Award Laureate. 

 “I am thrilled that our important work continues to be recognized,” said Anderegg. “I hope that our contributions to this field of research can help illuminate the future of Earth’s forests and provide urgently-needed tools to tackle climate change and increase resilience in ecosystems and communities in the US and across the globe.”

 The 2023 Blavatnik National Awards received 267 nominations from 134 institutions in 38 U.S. states. Nominees must be faculty-level scientific researchers, 42 years of age or younger. Three independent juries —one each for life sciences, chemistry, and physical sciences and engineering —were composed of some of America’s most distinguished scientists. The juries selected three winning laureates and 28 finalists.  

The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists will celebrated the 2023 laureates and finalists in a ceremony on September 19 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (See banner photo above: William Anderegg with Sir Leonard Valentinovich Blavatnik)

In April, Anderegg was one of three 2023 recipients of the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Alan T. Waterman Award for his contributions to ecosystem and climate change science.

 

 

New composite materials could light the way to advances in imaging

July 20, 2023

New composite materials could light the way to advances in imaging

 

Research led by University of Utah chemists has resulted in new composite materials capable of converting long low-energy lightwaves to higher-energy light, potentially opening more efficient avenues for transferring energy.

According to a recently published study, Ming Lee Tang and colleagues developed a method for joining minute silicon crystals with organic carbon-based molecules to develop hybrid compounds with optoelectronic properties that could enhance numerous technologies that harness light.

The discovery hinges on the strong chemical bonds her lab was able to achieve between two completely different materials, silicon and hydrocarbons.

“We use those excited states that are not the same as in the bulk materials in your computer,” said Tang, an associate professor of chemistry who came to the U from the University of California Riverside two years ago. “They absorb more strongly and you can also convert the energy in different ways that are not allowed in the bulk material. It’s different physics.”

 

Read the entire story by Brian Maffly @theU.

What can earthquake ‘swarms’ tell us about seismicity in the West?

July 20, 2023

Earthquake Swarms

Kristine Pankow, U professor of geology Credit: University of Utah

Most of the earthquakes rumbling under the West’s Great Basin come in surges, clustered together in time and place. Scientists call these seismic groups “swarms,” which are a distinct category from the numerous aftershocks following a big shake, such as the 5.7 magnitude Magna quake of 2020 on the Wasatch Fault.

Rather than getting spread out evenly over time, many of these small, often imperceptible quakes strike a region in a short period of time, say a few days or weeks.

Central Utah has been the stage for dozens of earthquake swarms that have been recorded over the past 40 years by an ever-expanding network of seismic arrays managed by the University of Utah.

Now U seismologists are analyzing decades of seismic data in the hope of discerning the significance of these swarms in a geologically complex region known as a geothermal hotspot and for recent—geologically speaking—volcanism.

“In central Utah, seismic swarms are much more common than any other type of sequence. We looked into all types of sequences, but 80% of the sequences are swarms. That’s remarkable,” said Gesa Petersen, a post-doctoral research fellow. “We also saw that these are very heterogeneous. So one location in central Utah can have a very, very different behavior than other locations just 30, 40, 50 kilometers away.”

With U geology professor Kristine Pankow, Petersen published the latest findings July 13 in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Funding came from the state of Utah and the $220 million Department of Energy grant supporting the U’s geothermal research station known as Utah FORGE.

 

Read the full story by Brian Maffly in @TheU

Carsten Rott, New Chair of Physics & Astronomy

July 20, 2023

Carsten Rott, New Chair of Physics & Astronomy

 

Professor Carsten Rott has been selected as new chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy. Rott holds the Jack W. Keuffel Memorial Chair in High Energy Astrophysics and will replace Christophe Boheme as department chair beginning August 1.

Rott’s research explores the Universe in a fundamentally new way, using high-energy neutrinos detected with the IceCube Neutrino Telescope. In particular he is interested in searching for signatures of new physics associated with the high-energy neutrinos we detect. He also searches for new phenomena with the JSNS2 experiment which aims to search for oscillations involving a sterile neutrino in the eV2 mass-splitting range. (A sterile neutrino is believed to interact only via gravity and not via any of the other fundamental interactions of the Standard Model.)

Rott currently focuses on constructing next-generation neutrino detectors to better understand the sources of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe and to probe physics at fundamentally new scales. His team constructs calibration systems for the IceCube Upgrade and develops solutions for a very large volume neutrino detector at the South Pole, building on the expertise of the pioneering cosmic ray experiments conducted by the University of Utah. He also seeks sustainable solutions to construct future experiments with minimal environmental impact.  He can also be found working at Hyper-Kamiokande, a neutrino observatory being constructed on the site of the Kamioka Observatory, near Kamioka, Japan, and he seeks for dark matter with COSINE experiment.

After studying physics as an undergraduate at the Universität Hannover, Rott went on to receive a Ph.D. from Purdue University for work on the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). He has been a member of the IceCube Neutrino Telescope since the start of the construction of the detector in 2005.  As a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State University he performed detector calibration and verification efforts for IceCube. For this task he traveled multiple times to the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station. Later he moved to The Ohio State University as a senior fellow of the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP). In 2013 he became an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea and was subsequently promoted to tenured associate Professor.

In 2021 Rott became a professor at the U where most recently he served as department director of graduate studies. He will hold the position of chair through December 2025.

Rott “is an exceptional educator and researcher, and has my complete confidence and support in his role as Chair,” remarked Peter Trapa, dean of the College of Science who made the announcement on June 28. “I look forward to working with Carsten to advance the department, particularly as it moves to its new home in the Crocker Science Complex in 2025.”

“I am grateful to Professor Christoph Boehme for his leadership over the past four years, first as Interim Chair, and then as Chair for the last three years.,” Trapa continued. “Christoph has made deep contributions to the department in advancing its research and educational missions during a time that was often consumed with the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

Boheme will serve as Special Advisor to the Chair for the period August 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024.

About the Department

New home for the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy

The U’s  Department of Physics & Astronomy is committed to pursuing key science questions within an inclusive academic community; to training and diversifying the next generation of researchers, educators, and technology workforce leaders; and to inspiring an appreciation for knowledge in students and the wider community.

In pursuit of this mission, the department supports the highest levels of research and teaching among its faculty members. We strive to enable the success of undergraduate and graduate students by creating an academically excellent, efficient, and comfortable learning environment. Our goal is that organizations and individuals in the local and global community will benefit from our research and accomplishments.

The Department of Physics & Astronomy will be relocating from the James Fletcher Building to the new Applied Science Project as part of the Crocker Science Complex. The department will offer classes in its new home in Spring Semester, 2025.