physics

Hints that dark energy may evolve

March 24, 2025

Hints that Dark Energy May EVOLVE

Above: Credit: DESI
March 24, 2025

The fate of the universe hinges on the balance between matter and dark energy: the fundamental ingredient that drives its accelerating expansion. New results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration use the largest 3D map of our universe ever made to track dark energy’s influence over the past 11 billion years. Researchers see hints that dark energy, widely thought to be a “cosmological constant,” might be evolving over time in unexpected ways.

DESI is an international galaxy survey experiment with more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions around the world, including from the University of Utah, and is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The collaboration shared their findings today in multiple papers that will be posted on the online repository arXiv and in a presentation at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California.

“What we are seeing is deeply intriguing,” said Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett, co-spokesperson for DESI and a professor at UC Santa Cruz. “It is exciting to think that we may be on the cusp of a major discovery about dark energy and the fundamental nature of our universe.”

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) operating out of the Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.

Taken alone, DESI’s data are consistent with our standard model of the universe: Lambda CDM (where CDM is cold dark matter and Lambda represents the simplest case of dark energy, where it acts as a cosmological constant with constant energy density). However, when paired with other measurements, there are mounting indications that the impact of dark energy may be weakening over time and that other models may be a better fit. Those other measurements include the light leftover from the dawn of the universe (the cosmic microwave background or CMB), exploding stars (supernovae), and how light from distant galaxies is warped by gravity (weak lensing).

“We’re guided by Occam’s razor, and the simplest explanation for what we see is shifting,” said Will Percival, co-spokesperson for DESI and a professor at the University of Waterloo. “It’s looking more and more like we may need to modify our standard model of cosmology to make these different datasets make sense together—and evolving dark energy seems promising.”

So far, the preference for an evolving dark energy has not risen to “5 sigma,” the gold standard in physics that represents the threshold for a discovery. However, different combinations of DESI data with the CMB, weak lensing, and supernovae sets range from 2.8 to 4.2 sigma. (A 3-sigma event has a 0.3% chance of being a statistical fluke, but many 3-sigma events in physics have faded away with more data.) The analysis used a technique to hide the results from the scientists until the end, mitigating any unconscious bias about the data.

“We now have a better understanding of where the preference for evolving dark energy arises in the data,” said University of Utah graduate student Qinxun Li. “By comparing the distance estimates from DESI to those from less distant supernovae and the predictions from the CMB, we can illustrate how a model with time-evolving dark energy describes the data better than does the standard model for the universe.”

DESI is one of the most extensive surveys of the cosmos ever conducted. The state-of-the-art instrument can capture light from 5,000 galaxies simultaneously, and was constructed and is operated with funding from the DOE Office of Science. DESI is mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (a program of NSF NOIRLab) in Arizona. The experiment is now in its fourth of five years surveying the sky, with plans to measure roughly 50 million galaxies and quasars (extremely distant yet bright objects with black holes at their cores) by the time the project ends.

Mechanical technician William DiVittorio performs a carbon dioxide cleaning on the mirror of the Mayall Telescope, where DESI operates.

The new analysis uses data from the first three years of observations and includes nearly 15 million of the best measured galaxies and quasars. It’s a major leap forward, improving the experiment’s precision with a dataset that is more than double what was used in DESI’s first analysis, which also hinted at an evolving dark energy.

“These new DESI measurements are not just more precise, but have also been shown to be extremely robust. We have compared these results to previous measurements and performed new tests of internal consistency and have detected no problems in the measurements” said Li, who developed several additional quality assessment tests on the DESI data that are new relative to the first-year results.

DESI tracks dark energy’s influence by studying how matter is spread across the universe. Events in the very early universe left subtle patterns in how matter is distributed, a feature called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). That BAO pattern acts as a standard ruler, with its size at different times directly affected by how the universe was expanding. Measuring the ruler at different distances shows researchers the strength of dark energy throughout history. DESI’s precision with this approach is the best in the world.

The collaboration will soon begin work on additional analyses to extract even more information from the current dataset, and DESI will continue collecting data. Other experiments coming online over the next several years will also provide complementary datasets for future analyses.

“With only three years of data from DESI, we have far more precise measurements than were obtained in ten years using similar techniques in the previous galaxy survey, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,” said Kyle Dawson, a professor in physics and astronomy at the University of Utah. Prof. Dawson was the co-spokesperson for DESI from Sept. 2020 to Aug. 2024 and was also the principal investigator for the last cosmology program within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. “I anxiously await the results from the next few years of DESI and other cosmological programs to see if these 3-4 sigma results fade away or if indeed they stick and reveal new physics beyond what we had assumed in our standard model.”

Videos discussing the experiment’s new analysis are available on the DESI YouTube channel. Alongside unveiling its latest dark energy results at the APS meeting today, the DESI collaboration also announced that its Data Release 1 (DR1), which contains the first 13 months of main survey data, is now available for anyone to explore. With information on millions of celestial objects, the dataset will support a wide range of astrophysical research by others, in addition to DESI’s cosmology goals.

DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science national user facility. Additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the National Council of Humanities, Sciences, and Technologies of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions.

Story above adapted from DESI.

Gamma ray observatory gets green light

March 12, 2025

Most powerful gamma ray observatory gets green light

March 12, 2025

At the start of the year, the European Commission established the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), furthering its mission to become the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for gamma-ray astronomy.

The creation of the CTAO-ERIC will enable the observatory’s construction to advance rapidly and provide a framework for distributing its data worldwide, significantly accelerating its progress toward scientific discovery. On Feb. 13, 2025, the ERIC Council approved to immediately negotiate the establishment of Japan as a strategic partner and the United States, Brazil and Australia as third-party members.

Animation of a blue light beam breaking up into multiple particles and hits Earth's atmosphere, scattering across the globe.

“This field did not exist before 1989 when the first the gamma ray source was detected. At that point, we knew of four sources in the world,” said Dave Kieda, professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Utah and the CTAO spokesperson for the U.S. “The past 35 years, we went from detecting the first to now seeing several hundred. With CTAO, we’re going to see thousands. And the University of Utah is part of that legacy.”

The CTAO-ERIC was established with the international support of 11 countries and one intergovernmental organization that contributed to the technological development, construction and operation of the observatory. For Kieda, the new array will give astronomers an unprecedented view of the mysterious radiation he’s spent his career studying.

“Over the last decade, people have discovered that these high energy gamma rays are present in many, many types of very energetic astronomical phenomenon, but we don’t know much about where they come from,” Kieda said.

 

Read the full story by Lisa Potter in @ The U. Video above:  Animation of a gamma ray hitting Earth’s atmosphere, creating the blue Cherenkov light that flashes for a billionth of a second.

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‘Vast discovery’ of black holes in dwarf galaxies

March 5, 2025

‘Vast discovery’ of black holes in dwarf galaxies

March 5, 2025

Using early data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a team of scientists, led by University of Utah postdoctoral researcher Ragadeepika Pucha, have compiled the largest sample ever of dwarf galaxies that host an actively feeding black hole, as well as the most extensive collection of intermediate-mass black hole candidates to date.

This dual achievement not only expands scientists’ understanding of the black hole population in the universe but also sets the stage for further explorations the formation of the first black holes to form in the universe and their role in galaxy evolution.

With DESI’s early data, the team was able to obtain an unprecedented dataset that includes the spectra of 410,000 galaxies, including roughly 115,000 dwarf galaxies—small, diffuse galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars and very little gas. This extensive set would allow Pucha and her team to explore the complex interplay between black hole evolution and dwarf galaxy evolution.

While astrophysicists are fairly confident that all massive galaxies, like our Milky Way, host black holes at their centers, the picture becomes unclear as you move toward the low-mass end of the spectrum. Finding black holes is a challenge on its own but identifying them in dwarf galaxies is even more difficult due to their small sizes and the limited ability of our current instruments to resolve the regions close to these objects. An actively feeding black hole, however, is easier to spot.

“When a black hole at the center of a galaxy starts feeding, it unleashes a tremendous amount of energy into its surroundings, transforming into what we call an active galactic nucleus,” said Pucha. “This dramatic activity serves as a beacon, allowing us to identify hidden black holes in these small galaxies.”

The study is online as a pre-print ahead of publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

Read the full story by Lisa Potter in @ The U.

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Astronomy teams win Scialog funding

February 21, 2025

Tanmoy Laskar & Team Awarded inaugural Scialog Award

February 25, 2025
Above: Tanmoy Laskar, assistant professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Utah

University of Utah astronomer Tanmoy Laskar and his team have been awarded $60,000 in direct costs to support research through the first year of the Scialog: Early Science with LSST.

Tanmoy Laskar with his mentees at a radio astronomy workshop at the U in summer 2024.

The three-year initiative aims to advance the foundational science needed to realize the full potential of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Funded by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), the 21 separate awards of $60,000 in direct costs each will support a total of 20 scientists from colleges, universities, and research institutions in the United States and Canada. Laskar's team includes Igor Andreoni, Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Mathew Madhavacheril, Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania. Their research focus is titled Rubin LSST as a Multi-Wavelength Discovery Engine for Relativistic Transients.

Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format aims to accelerate breakthroughs by building a creative network of scientists that crosses disciplinary silos and stimulating intensive conversation around a scientific theme of global importance. The initiative represents a fulfilling new chapter in the story of RCSA’s long-term support of the Rubin Observatory, located in north-central Chile.

exploiting a novel synergy

With his team, Laskar studies the most energetic explosions in the Universe that hurl matter in fast jets close to the speed of light. This includes gamma-ray bursts from the deaths of massive stars, merging stars that make gravitational waves and provide the Universe with its supply of heavy elements, and tidal disruption events from stars getting ripped apart by black holes. "The rarity of these extreme explosions has made them difficult to find and understand in detail," says Laskar who explains that LSST, which operates at visible wavelengths of light, will discover thousands of these every year. "Unfortunately," he continues, the rarest and most interesting events will be buried in the millions of new alerts the survey will generate every night!. Our Scialog LSST project aims to solve this problem by exploiting a novel synergy of LSST with telescope surveys built for an entirely different purpose: to study the relict microwave light from the Big Bang."

Energetic explosions produce a lot of microwaves, providing an excellent test that can distinguish them from other classes of transients. "Our team will develop tools to search for millimeter emission from candidates found by LSST in data taken by concurrently running CMB surveys in real time. Not only will this help us find the most exciting events, but knowing the millimeter brightness and polarization of these events will be essential in testing our theoretical models about how nature makes these explosions and how physics behaves under the associated extreme conditions of temperature, density, and magnetization."

The team includes members with access to precursor surveys, which will help them quickly develop and test the tools they will need on data already on hand. "

"My expertise," says Laskar, "is on modeling these explosions and extracting physics from the data."

'Taking great data'

In November, at the initiative's  inaugural conference held in Tucson, Arizona, Bob Blum, Rubin Observatory’s Director of Operations, discussed the recent successful use of the commissioning camera, which came online in October 2024.

“There's lots of challenges,” he said. “The system isn't reliable yet, but when it works, we're taking great data.”

With technical first light on the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera (the world’s largest digital camera) expected by early June 2025, full operations could start in September or October 2025. He said the first data preview should be available to researchers in March 2025, and the second in March 2026.

In time, the observatory will be able to survey the entire sky in only three nights and is expected to generate more than 20 terabytes of data each night, amassing a set of data and images that could address some of the deepest questions about the universe, its evolution, and the objects within it.

The Laskar group not only promises to help develop tools to find the most exciting events from those data made available each night, they will lead the modeling and data interpretation efforts. "I am looking forward to discovering and studying new and unusual events that will further our understanding of how physics behaves in some of the most extreme environments in the universe," says Laskar.

The Heising-Simons Foundation, The Brinson Foundation, the Leinweber Foundation, and independent philanthropist Kevin Wells are providing support to RCSA to fund the work of the eight cross-disciplinary teams.

by David Pace

 

 

 

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Widening Our Cosmic View

February 6, 2025

Widening our Cosmic View

Above: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Photo credit, NASA
February 6, 2025

In a field of groundbreaking discoveries and analytical research papers, it's easy to lose sight of the humanity behind the STEM fields. This includes the meticulous organization that goes into every project, the countless sleepless nights seeking their completion and the individual lives supporting every major breakthrough.

Gail Zasowski

 

Teams are valued within scientific communities, but when it comes to broader public recognition it’s rare for anything more than an organization or singular leader to step into the spotlight.

But times are changing at breakneck speeds, the value of these enablers of science becoming more and more apparent as the spotlight grows to encompass them. With the upcoming launch of the Roman Space Telescope we are seeing a shift towards broader perspectives, bringing more voices into decision-making processes to optimize the pursuit of scientific advancement.

Taking a novel approach for NASA’s missions, where observations with telescopes like Hubble and James Webb were largely proposal-based (scientists writing competing proposals to win time using the telescopes’ instruments), Roman will be predominantly driven by surveys designed by the astronomical community as a whole. That community is made up of an extensive structure of committees involving hundreds (if not thousands) of astronomers who have spent years analyzing which observational designs would be the most useful for their community at large. This will create an archive of data which anyone in the world can access to do science.

A wider range of expertise

An undertaking like this requires organizational expertise which is where Gail Zasowski, an associate professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, comes into play. Co-chairing the Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee (ROTAC) alongside Saurabh Jha (Rutgers University), she and the committee of 13 scientists are tasked with taking all of these proposed survey designs and constructing a plan that best balances the scientific goals of the astronomical community. For example, some time will be spent studying black holes and stellar explosions dating back to the early universe, while other observations will focus closer to home, on stars and planets in our own Milky Way and even asteroids in our Solar System. Thus the ROTAC is faced with the challenge (or opportunity) to plan a multi-year observing program that includes everything from solar system formation to dark matter and dark energy.

“Our committee was deliberately chosen to span a wide range of science expertise,” Zasowski explains. “It’s our job to evaluate from a scientific perspective how to maximize the observational output of the telescope. Is there somewhere everybody wants to look, where an observation could kill two birds with one stone? Given other telescope missions around the world, where can Roman have the largest unique impact?” 

It’s an impressive task to keep all these plates spinning at once, but that’s the beauty of moving these decisions to a communal level. By enabling collaboration, the community can plan far more efficiently than any one individual team or project could do on its own.

A wider range of voices

Yerkes Observatory Roman Workshop. Zasowski is pictured center left. Credit: Yerkes Observatory. Inset: Nancy Roman.

Zasowski was chosen for her background in ground-based astronomy surveys, a priority shared by the U’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. She explains that “Where many larger institutions will devote their time and money buying into one large telescope, we have elected to spend our time and energy participating in surveys. We feel it gets more bang for your buck, more photons per dollar, as being in these surveys not only grants access to data, but also access to the scientific community who makes the survey happen.” 

This pattern repeats across campus, investing in building core skills and wider networking to get a foot into every door, rather than definitively propping only one open. Everything from the Science Research Initiative which builds research connections for students far earlier than most; to the Early Exploration Scholars which broadens those connections for all campus students; and to  the ACCESS Scholars program working to eliminate social barriers that have traditionally existed in STEM. 

By investing in the community aspect of science so early, the U’s students and faculty are perfectly suited to fill these organizational roles, bring people together and lay the groundwork that enables future science to be conducted.

Zasowski describes an inspiring experience at Yerkes Observatory last year. “We were at the observatory where Nancy Grace Roman [the telescope’s namesake] did her Ph.D.” she describes. ”We were in the rooms where she worked, talking about designing a survey to study the science she was interested in while using a space telescope named after her.”

As a woman in astronomy starting in the 1940s, Roman had faced significant uphill battles in securing her place in the astronomical community. For the “Mother of Hubble” to be honored in such a way — for the first telescope named after a woman to be so organized around working together — it's a beautiful full-circle moment. It's a symbol of progress, of our expanding view of the night sky mirrored in a scientific field expanding to include and celebrate those who historically struggled to find their place within it.

The Roman Telescope is scheduled to be launched in October of next year, to journey around the Sun for at least five years and provide the astronomical community with data to study for many more years to follow.

by Michael Jacobsen

Tino Nyawelo, Presidential Societal Impact Scholar

February 3, 2025

Presidential Societal Impact Award

Above: Tino Nyawelo
February 3, 2025

Tino Nyawelo, physics, is one of five faculty members named by University of Utah President Taylor Randall  as 2025-26 Presidential Societal Impact Scholars for exemplary public engagement, from eliminating health inequities to helping communities plan and prepare for disasters and mentoring STEM education students.

 

Nyawelo is a professor (lecturer) in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. His main area of research is physics education with the focus on equity/access in education. He is the Director of Undergraduate Research and coordinates the NSF Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program.

In 2012, he founded the REFUGES program, a robust STEM-focused refugee and minority student support program with two distinct components: 1) an after-school program for middle- and high-school students; and 2) a summer bridge program for students transitioning to the University of Utah. REFUGES addresses the academic and cultural challenges of refugee youth in fifteen hours of programming per week on the U of U campus. Participants receive individual tutoring and mentoring, science enrichment activities, college and career readiness interventions, and workshops promoting healthy lifestyles. The program has impacted the lives of over 1,000 refugee youth living in the Salt Lake Valley.

In 2020, he joined the High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics (HiSPARC), a project in which high schools and academic institutions join forces and form a network to observe and measure ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with a ground-based scintillation detector. HiSPARC project started in the Netherlands in 2003, and in 2024 HiSPARC moved to University of Utah under his leadership and provided the initial infrastructure to imagine new research opportunities in K-12 science education. There are currently two projects that deploy HiSPARC cosmic ray detectors with high school students and teachers in Utah: 1) The InSPIRE Program (Investigating the Development of STEM-Positive Identities of Refugee Teens in a Physics Out-of-School Time Experience); and 2) A Research Experiences for Teachers (RET).

He obtained his master’s degree in theoretical high energy physics at the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Free University of Amsterdam.

Other awardees include David Wetter, professor, population health sciences and adjunct professor, psychology, and director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Population Equity (HOPE); Matthew Basso, associate professor, gender studies and history; Divya Chandrasekhar, associate professor, Department of City and Metropolitan Planning; and Sameer Rao, assistant professor, mechanical engineering.

'Incredible impact'

"As Presidential Societal Impact Scholars, these exceptional faculty demonstrate how public engagement and scholarship can have a broad impact on the world around us,” said President Taylor Randall. “As one of the nation’s leading research universities, we aim to improve the communities we serve by sharing our research and expertise in meaningful ways. The recipients of this award embody this mission, translating their work into efforts that not only shape their fields but also positively transform society.”

Each scholar will receive a one-time cash award of $10,000 and support from University Marketing & Communications to promote their research, scholarship and initiatives.

To be considered, the faculty member’s area of focus must address a major societal issue, such as physical health and well-being, mental illness, poverty, the housing crisis, an environmental problem, etc. The nominee’s work should have the potential to inform public debate and positively impact individuals, institutions and communities.

“This year’s scholars represent the incredible impact that faculty can have beyond the classroom through service and public engagement,” said law professor Randy Dryer, who established the award in 2022 through a gift to the university. “Their work not only advances their respective fields but also demonstrates a deep commitment to improving the lives of individuals and communities. These scholars translate their research and expertise into real-world solutions, making a tangible difference in society, using their knowledge to create a more just and equitable world for all.”

The 2025-26 Presidential Societal Impact Scholars will serve through May 2026 and then continue as members of the permanent scholars’ network. All scholars are highlighted here.

Former Space Researcher and Analyst Pens Gripping Mystery

September 25, 2024

Former Space Researcher and Analyst
Pens Gripping Mystery

Sep 24, 2024
Above: Elizabeth Heider

Utah native Elizabeth Heider BS'00 physics is set to sign copies of her debut mystery novel, “May the Wolf Die,” at Dolly’s Bookstore in Park City on Sept. 29 at 12 p.m.

Heider’s novel, set in Naples, Italy, follows a female detective investigating organized crime and its connections to the U.S. military presence in the city.

“The inspiration for ‘May the Wolf Die’ came from my diverse experiences,” Heider said. She explained that after completing her degree at the University of Utah, she worked as a deployed civilian analyst with the U.S. Navy, including three years stationed in Naples. Her work took her to 15 African countries, saw her training troops in Senegal, Gabon, and Cameroon, and even lecturing at INTERPOL headquarters in France.

Heider’s Utah roots run deep. “I’m a Utah Native – raised in South Jordan Utah,” she said. “Although I left the state for work in 2008, I regularly return; my parents, two sisters, and brother, are still living here.”

The author’s background spans physics, military analysis, and space research. After earning her Physics degree from the University of Utah she completed her PhD at Tufts University. Her career includes work with the European Space Agency’s Human Spaceflight program and her current role as a program manager for Microsoft’s AI4Science program in the Netherlands.

Heider's writing isn’t limited to novels. Her credits include a play produced at the U, a chemistry patent and even a comic series for the European Space Agency. For years, her science writings were regularly read by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Read the full article by Laura M in TownLift.

Tony Hawk : The Intuitive Physicist of Vert Skating

June 13, 2024

The Intuitive Physicist of Vert Skating

June 13, 2024
Above: Tony Hawk executing an impressive aerial maneuver on his skateboard.

'Would you consider Tony Hawk a physicist?'

'I would consider Tony Hawk a physicist. If nothing else, he’s an intuitive scientist, right?'

Before you go, watch Kevin Davenport, assistant lecture professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the U, break down the physics that allows vert skaters to huck themselves into the stratosphere—learn why he calls Tony Hawk an intuitive scientist.

Read the rest of the story by Lisa Potter at @The U. 

 

The collapse and subsequent explosion of a massive star: B.O.A.T.

April 19, 2024

The collapse and explosion of a massive star: B.O.A.T.

April 19, 2024

Above: Artist’s visualization of GRB 221009A showing the narrow relativistic jets (emerging from a central black hole) that gave rise to the gamma-ray burst and the expanding remains of the original star ejected via the supernova explosion. CREDIT: AARON M. GELLER / NORTHWESTERN / CIERA / IT RESEARCH COMPUTING AND DATA SERVICES

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 of all time”) — is the collapse and subsequent explosion of a massive star.

Tanmoy Laskar, assistant professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Utah

The team discovered the explosion, or supernova, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

While this discovery solves one mystery, another mystery deepens. The researchers speculated that evidence of heavy elements, such as platinum and gold, might reside within the newly uncovered supernova. The extensive search, however, did not find the signature that accompanies such elements. The origin of heavy elements in the universe continues to remain as one of astronomy’s biggest open questions.

Tanmoy Laskar, coauthor on the study that published in Nature Astronomy on April 12, spoke with AtTheU about why GRB 221009A was the B.O.A.T.

We have seen gamma-ray bursts before, but this one was so bright that its light blinded our gamma-ray telescopes in space and even shook the Earth’s upper atmosphere! Several dedicated people worked very hard to reconstruct the original gamma-ray signal and found that this gamma-ray burst was by far the brightest of all time (B.O.A.T) we have ever recorded. It has been exciting to study the B.O.A.T. over the last couple of years to try to figure two big mysteries: What kind of star is responsible for this powerful light display, and what produces the heavy elements in the universe?

How can finding a supernova help in solving these mysteries?

There are two theories to what makes these powerful, gamma-ray bursts—one is the collapse of massive stars at the ends of their lives (which also results in an explosion of the star as a supernova), and the other is a merger of two neutron stars, which are dense remnants of dead stars. We looked for the signature of a supernova, which would definitively tell us which theory was responsible for the B.O.A.T. explosion.

The other reason we wanted to search for the supernova was to solve the mystery of what produces heavy metals. Supernovae are factories that manufacture many elements in the universe—could a supernova powerful enough to create the gamma-ray burst also produce heavy elements in the explosion, like platinum and gold?

Read the entire interview conducted by Lisa Potter in AtTheU.
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Utah Refugee Teens Build Cosmic Ray Detectors

April 12, 2024

Utah Refugee Teens Build Cosmic Ray Detectors

April 11, 2024

This collaborative cosmic ray project connects refugee youth to science

 

On April 9, 2024, a community of refugee students and their families, scientists, educators and policymakers will celebrate an event three years in the making—the installation of five cosmic ray detectors atop the Department of Workforce Services Refugee Services Office (also known as the Utah Refugee Center) in downtown Salt Lake City. The detectors, which measure echoes of cosmic particles bombarding Earth’s atmosphere, were built by nearly 60 participants in a program called “Investigating the Development of STEM-Positive Identities of Refugee Teens in a Physics Out of School Time Experience (InSPIRE)”, which brings science research—in this case particle physics—to teenagers and contributes to a worldwide effort to measure cosmic ray activity on Earth.

“Refugee youth often encounter many challenges related to STEM, including restricted exposure to STEM education, language barriers, cultural adjustments and a history of interrupted schooling, resulting in a low rate of high school completion and college matriculation among refugee students,” said Tino Nyawelo, principal investigator of InSPIRE and professor of physics and astronomy at the U. “The project conducts research to better understand these challenges and how to best broaden access to and engagement in STEM for refugee youth and other historically disenfranchised populations.”


Tino Nyawelo kicks off the cosmic ray detector installation celebration at the Utah Refugee Services Center on April 9, 2024. (Photo: Todd Anderson)

InSPIRE brings together the University of Utah, Utah State University, Utah Department of Workforce Services Refugee Services Office, as well as the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef) in Amsterdam, to involve teens in real science. Data from the students’ cosmic rays detectors helps us understand the origins of the universe. The celebration is on Tuesday, April 9, at 1:30 p.m. at the Refugee Services Office at 150 N. 1950 W., Salt Lake City, UT 84116. A short ceremony will include speakers from the U, USU and the Refugee Services Office, and two student-participants will be available with research posters to talk about their cosmic ray detection projects.

Funded by a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2020, InSPIRE explores how refugee teenagers identify with STEM subjects while they participate in a cosmic ray detector-building and research project. Fifty-seven refugee teens spent one-to two-days a week for nearly three years building the detectors while learning the principles of particle physics and computer programming. The students designed their own research projects, posing questions such as whether the moon impacts cosmic rays. While some participants focused on the detectors, others focused on crafting short films on their fellow students’ research journeys. These students are working on a documentary, in partnership with the ArtsBridge America program at the U’s College of Fine Arts.

Neriman (left) and Lina Al Samaray with a poster of their research project, Effect of the Moon on Cosmic Ray Detectors. The high highschoolers used data from existing HiSPARC detectors to investigate whether the moon’s position from the horizon impacted the rate of cosmic rays hitting Earth’s surface.(Photo: Lisa Potter)

InSPIRE is embedded within Refugees Exploring the Foundations of Undergraduate Education In Science (REFUGES), an after school program that Nyawelo founded to support refugee youth in Utah’s school system, who are placed in grade levels corresponding to their ages despite going long periods without formal education. The U’s Center for Science and Mathematics Education (CSME) has housed the REFUGES program since 2012, where it has expanded to include non-refugee students who are underrepresented in STEM fields. Since then, REFUGES has worked closely with the state of Utah’s Department of Workforce Services Refugee Services Office, which serves as a critical link to the refugee community by coordinating comprehensive services to refugees resettled in our state.

“For the past 12 years, the Refugee Services Office has collaborated with the REFUGES program to identify refugee students and their families who need academic assistance and support. Participation in REFUGES keeps these students engaged in their community while also promoting their access to educational opportunities,” said Mario Kligago, director of the Utah RSO. “It’s amazing—what started as a small project funded by a Refugee Services Office grant has grown into a multi-million dollar endeavor backed by national organizations.”

The detector technology is adapted from HiSPARC (High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics), a collaboration between science institutions that started in the Netherlands, aimed at improving high schoolers’ interest in particle physics. There are now more than 140 student-built detectors on buildings in the Netherlands, Namibia, and the United Kingdom that upload their data 24/7 to publicly available databases. Nikhef in Amsterdam coordinated the project from 2003-2023 and created the initial worldwide network of cosmic ray detection data. Starting in 2024, data on extensive cosmic air showers and the digital HiSPARC infrastructure will be hosted and maintained by the U’s Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC), led by professor Nyawelo.

Read the full article in @TheU.

Watch below the video of the cosmic ray detector deployment in Salt Lake City facilitated by Tino Nyawelo through his REFUGES and INSPIRE programs.

 

 

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