Upon meeting UCR physicists Allen Mills and Harry Tom, you may think the pair would rarely be seen in the same room, given how divergent their personalities are. The introverted Mills is soft-spoken and shy; his wife jokes he has “no personality.” Tom, on the other hand, is a bubbly extrovert, whose bursts of laughter...
Barry Barish, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside and a Nobel laureate, has won the Copernicus Prize, bestowed by the government of Poland on “those who made exceptional contributions to the development of world science.”
The “Night of Art and Innovation” was back for the 10th time in downtown Riverside last week. Thousands of interested children and adults walked through arts and science displays of 400 presenters. A major player this year was the UCR Department of Physics and Astronomy with a strong team of 30 undergraduate and graduate students...
Roya Zandi, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCR, has been named a fellow of the American Physical Society, a non-profit organization that advances knowledge of physics. Roya Zandi Roya Zandi. Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one's professional peers. Each year, no more than one half of one percent of the...
A physicist at the University of California, Riverside, and her former graduate student have successfully modeled the formation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that spreads COVID-19, for the first time. In a paper published in Viruses, a journal, Roya Zandi, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCR, and Siyu Li, a postdoctoral researcher at Songshan...
A research team led by a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has demonstrated a new magnetized state in a monolayer of tungsten ditelluride, or WTe2, a new quantum material. Called a magnetized or ferromagnetic quantum spin Hall insulator, this material of one-atom thickness has an insulating interior but a conducting edge, which has...
A study co-led by physicists at UC Riverside and UC Irvine has found that dark matter halos of ultra-diffuse galaxies are very odd, raising questions about physicists’ understanding of galaxy formation and the structure of the universe. Ultra-diffuse galaxies are so called because of their extremely low luminosity. The distribution of baryons — gas and...
Early in its history, shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with equal amounts of matter and “antimatter” — particles that are matter counterparts but with opposite charge. But then, as space expanded, the universe cooled. Today’s universe is full of galaxies and stars which are made of matter. Where did the antimatter...
The Physics and Astronomy Department is adding two more faculty positions to the growing Experimental Cosmology, Particle Astrophysics, and Gravitational Waves research group.
Three young physicists at the University of California, Riverside, have been thinking big. Gigantic-particle-accelerator big. Undergraduates Andrew Caruso, Robert Vasquez, and Selim Zoorob did internships this summer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. The center is home to the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
Antiferromagnets have zero net magnetization and are insensitive to external magnetic field perturbations. Antiferromagnetic spintronic devices hold great promise for creating future ultra-fast and energy-efficient information storage, processing, and transmission platforms, potentially leading to faster and more energy-efficient computers.
Excitations in magnets -- magnons -- hold great promise for quantum and classical information processing due to excellent scalability, tunability and energy-efficiency of magnonic devices. Magnonics is at the forefront of fundamental and applied research in magnetism and attracts excellent scientists all over the world. This year, the seventh in the series of the renowned...
In a paper published earlier this month in Nature Physics, Yongtao Cui, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside, and colleagues report the discovery of a novel electronic state in a new type of moiré superlattice formed by 2D materials.
Each simple RNA virus has a genome, its “native RNA.” This genome dictates how the virus replicates in cells to eventually cause disease. The genome also has the code for making a capsid, the protein shell of a virus that encapsulates the genome and protects it like a nanocontainer. A team led by Roya Zandi...
Peter Carney, a second-year undergraduate student at UC Riverside, has earned a spot in a prestigious and highly competitive summer undergraduate research fellowship program at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The program is hosted by Caltech LIGO. LIGO, which stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, is based at sites in Louisiana and Washington...
n international team of astronomers led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, has discovered an unusual massive cluster of young galaxies forming in the early universe. The newly discovered growing galactic metropolis, named MAGAZ3NE J095924+022537, is a newborn galaxy cluster, or protocluster, consisting of at least 38 member galaxies, and is about 11.8...
During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, multiple new and more transmissible variants of the virus have emerged. Understanding how specific mutations affect SARS-CoV-2 transmission could help us to better understand the biology of the virus and to control outbreaks. This, however, is a challenging task, said John Barton, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the...
