Mathematical & Physical Sciences

In a Q&A, UC Berkeley astronomer Gibor Basri reality-checks the recent sci-fi movie and talks about the chances of encountering life elsewhere in the galaxy.

In the sci-fi book and now movie Project Hail Mary, astronaut Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, encounters three different alien lifeforms in the vicinity of Earth. He joins forces with one of them, from the star 40 Eridani, to try to stop another, an alien microbe from Tau Ceti, that is eating stars — including our sun. The third lifeform saves the day.

Aliens have long been a common trope in...

A UC Berkeley theorist proposed that highly magnetized, spinning neutron stars were the power source behind superluminous supernovae. A recent supernova provided the smoking gun.

Astronomers have for the first time seen the birth of a magnetar — a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star — and confirmed that it’s the power source behind some of the brightest exploding stars in the cosmos.

The finding corroborates a theory proposed by a UC Berkeley physicist 16 years ago and establishes a new phenomenon in exploding stars: supernovae with a “chirp” in their light...

Standing on Asilomar State Beach just west of Monterey, Marius Castro talked with dozens of his fellow UC Berkeley students for hours under the moonlight. The moment felt special to Castro, like he was in a movie. In actuality, he was attending the first annual MPS Scholars retreat.

“Everybody I met had such good vibes,” said Castro, a third-year student double majoring in applied mathematics and computer science. “I...

In this Research With Results video, lab director Richard Allen explains how their work helps keep Californians safe while contributing to important earthquake-related research.

Earthquakes may cause some people to flee the Golden State, but Richard Allen came to California precisely because of them. As a seismologist — a scientist who studies the geological causes of quakes — he saw UC Berkeley as the epicenter of cutting-edge research in the field.

Much of that is thanks to the Berkeley Seismological...