The discovery of an Earth-like planet 4,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy provides a preview of one possible fate for our planet billions of years in the future, when the sun has turned into a white dwarf, and a blasted and frozen Earth has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.
This distant planetary system, identified by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers after observations with the Keck 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, looks very similar to expectations for the sun-Earth system: it consists of a white dwarf about half the mass of the sun and an Earth-size...
Dr. Gibor Basri to receive the 2024 Arthur B.C. Walker II Award given for outstanding achievement in astronomy and education by an African- American scientist.
San Francisco, California- September 16, 2024 – The Arthur B.C. Walker Award honors an African-American scientist whose research has substantially contributed to astronomy or related...
Bill Boos started out as a physics guy at a big public institution (SUNY-Binghamton) and that’s the way he still sees himself. He’s a professor in Earth & Planetary Science here at UC Berkeley now, but “earth science is physics, just with a particular focus.” Boos’ research focuses on large-scale climate dynamics—how atmospheric circulations, ocean interactions, radiative transfer, and land surface processes control regional and global climate. He helps discover how the world around us works, and he gets there through careful theory and...
Stanford alumnus (Honors BS ’15) Michael Lindsey chose UC Berkeley for his PhD program largely because he wasn’t sure what areas of mathematics he was interested in pursuing – the Berkeley department encompasses a very broad range of theoretical and applied topics, and therefore afforded him a lot of flexibility. Lindsey wasn’t certain about a lot of things, actually. Most Stanford STEM majors assumed they would end up as engineers in Silicon Valley, him included. He grew up in Washington, DC with a professional policy wonk dad and pediatrician mom with no physical science...
Professor Joshua Simon Bloom first joined the Astronomy Department in 2005. By then he had already bounced between the US and the UK, between the ivy-covered brickwork at Harvard and the sun-drenched courtyards at Caltech, and there would still be many career ricochets to come before he landed in the Chair’s desk at UC Berkeley. In 2020. Just as the pandemic lockdown was unfolding. Perfect. He ran the department during COVID the same way he aims to in all the projects he leads: by striving to provide the best tools and right support so that everyone involved can do their best work. This...
While the 2024 Games may have drawn to a close, there are still student athletes in the College of Chemistry who daily display the same kind of discipline and resilience as any Olympian. “Being a student athlete at the University of California, Berkeley, presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities,” says gymnast and recent College of Chemistry student Jaxon Mitchell(link is external). He adds, “Balancing a rigorous academic...
Over the course of nearly five months in 2022, NASA’s Perseverance rover collected rock samples from Mars that could rewrite the history of water on the Red Planet and even contain evidence for past life on Mars.
But the information they contain can’t be extracted without more detailed analysis on Earth, which requires a new mission to the planet to retrieve the samples and bring them back. Scientists hope to have the samples on Earth by 2033, though NASA’s sample return mission may be delayed.
“These samples are the reason why our mission was flown,” said paper co-author...
Glaciers are retreating around the world as the planet warms, but scientists have debated how severe the shrinkage is compared to periodic glacial advances and retreats since the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.
A new study of four glaciers dotting the high Andes in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia shows that, at least in the tropics, the...
Already known as a leader in quantum science and a testbed for quantum computing, the University of California, Berkeley, is expanding its footprint with the hiring of four early-career experimental physicists who use quantum systems to explore new frontiers in physics.
The new assistant professors of physics will augment a wide range of quantum research...
Dark energy — a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate — was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new and exotic particle causing the expansion.
Pushing the boundaries of this search, University of California, Berkeley physicists have now built the most precise experiment yet...
San Francisco, California- September 16, 2024 – The Arthur B.C. Walker Award
Glaciers are retreating around the world as the planet warms, but scientists have debated how severe the shrinkage is compared to periodic glacial advances and retreats since the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.
