Congratulations to Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu who has secured funding to organise a seminar in nuclear astrophysics.
Bringing together experts from around the world to engage in discussions and knowledge exchange is a key element in paving the way for progress within research science communities.
Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu (Chair) with Prof Philip J Woods (Co-organiser), who are based in the School’s Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, have successfully secured a grant worth €40,000 to organise a WE-Heraeus Seminar: Nuclear Astrophysics with Ion Storage Rings.
The event aims to bring together global experts, including those with experimental and theoretical backgrounds, who are engaged in various storage ring projects. The primary objective is to foster constructive discussions on the most promising avenues to maximize the impact of existing facilities and capitalise on synergies among research groups.
Scheduled for the final week of January 2024, the event will involve knowledge exchange and collaboration, paving the way for advancements in nuclear astrophysics.
Funding has been secured from the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation in Germany, a philanthropic funding foundation which supports scientific research and education, strengthens cooperation between researchers, and trains young scientists.
Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu commented:
I am overwhelmed to have been selected for this prestigious funding opportunity, which marks the first external funding success of my career. I am grateful for the support and recognition from Wilhelm und Else Heraeus-Stiftung and I am excited to organize the British-German WE-Heraeus-Seminar on Nuclear Astrophysics with Ion Storage Rings. This grant will provide invaluable resources to bring together experts in the field and facilitate productive discussions and collaborations. I am truly honoured and motivated to make this seminar a success.
Astronomers using the most powerful telescope ever built have identified a massive, densely packed galaxy 25 billion light years away.
The galaxy – known as GS-9209 – formed just 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang, and is the earliest of its kind found to date, researchers say.
A team led by researchers from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to reveal in detail the properties of GS-9209 for the first time.
Despite being around 10 times smaller than the Milky Way, GS-9209 has a similar number of stars to our own galaxy. These have a combined mass around 40 billion times that of our Sun, and were formed rapidly before star formation in GS-9209 stopped, the team says.
GS-9209 is the earliest known example of a galaxy no longer forming stars – known as a quiescent galaxy. When the team observed it at 1.25 billion years after the Big Bang, no stars had formed in the galaxy for about half a billion years.
Analysis also shows that GS-9209 contains a supermassive black hole at its centre that is five times larger than astronomers might anticipate in a galaxy with this number of stars. The discovery could explain why GS-9209 stopped forming new stars, the team says.
The growth of supermassive black holes releases huge amounts of high-energy radiation, which can heat up and push gas out of galaxies. This could have caused star formation in GS-9209 to stop, as stars form when clouds of dust and gas particles inside galaxies collapse under their own weight.
GS-9209 was first discovered in 2004 by Edinburgh PhD student Karina Caputi, who was supervised at the time by Professors Jim Dunlop and Ross McLure in the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. Caputi is now a Professor at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
The findings are published in the journal Nature. The research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Science and Technology Facilities Council and UK Research and Innovation.
Lead researcher Dr Adam Carnall of the School of Physics and Astronomy said:
The James Webb Space Telescope has already demonstrated that galaxies were growing larger and earlier than we ever suspected during the first billion years of cosmic history. This work gives us our first really detailed look at the properties of these early galaxies, charting in detail the history of GS-9209, which managed to form as many stars as our own Milky Way in just 800 million years after the Big Bang. The fact that we also see a very massive black hole in this galaxy was a big surprise, and lends a lot of weight to the idea that these black holes are what shut down star formation in early galaxies.
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Come along to our Open Days to find out more about studying at the University of Edinburgh and the School of Physics & Astronomy.
Our Open Days will take place on Saturday 7th October and Saturday 28th October 2023. At the School of Physics & Astronomy you will get the chance to find out more about our Undergraduate degree programmes, meet academics and students, and tour our physics labs.
Please check the University of Edinburgh Open Day pages to find out more and book your place.
A team of astronomers have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed.
The explosion is more than ten times brighter than any known supernova (exploding star) and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole.
The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, has currently lasted over three years, compared to most supernovae which are only visibly bright for a few months. It took place nearly 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes.
The researchers believe that the explosion is a result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than our sun, that has been violently disrupted by a supermassive black hole. Fragments of the cloud would be swallowed up, sending shockwaves through its remnants, as well as into a large dusty ‘doughnut’ surrounding the black hole. Such events are very rare and nothing on this scale has been witnessed before.
Last year, astronomers witnessed the brightest explosion on record - a gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A. While this was brighter than AT2021lwx, it lasted for just a fraction of the time, meaning the overall energy released by the AT2021lwx explosion is far greater.
The team are now setting out to collect more data on the explosion - measuring different wavelengths, including X-rays which could reveal the object’s surface and temperature, and what underlying processes are taking place. They will also carry out upgraded computational simulations to test if these match their theory of what caused the explosion.
The research involved astronomers from a number of universities, including Professor Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, and was led by a team at the University of Southampton.
The findings of the research have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Congratulations to Dr Andrew McLeod who has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and will be joining the School’s Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics.
Fellowship scheme
The Royal Society University Research Fellowship scheme is for outstanding scientists who are in the early stages of their research career. It provides them with the opportunity and freedom to build an independent research career and pursue cutting-edge scientific research.
In addition to receiving the Fellowship, Dr McLeod has also been awarded enhanced research funds which will support an additional postdoctoral researcher for the duration of the grant.
The mathematics behind scattering amplitudes
Dr Andrew McLeod’s research focuses on the study of scattering amplitudes, which describe what happens when high-energy particles collide. He is particularly interested in understanding their mathematical structure, in order to develop more efficient ‘bootstrap’ methods for computing these functions directly from physical principles and knowledge of their mathematical properties. His research has given rise to some of the highest-order calculations of scattering amplitudes in perturbation theory, and has led to the discovery of a number of surprising new symmetries and dualities.
Andrew obtained his PhD from Stanford University, and has held postdoctoral positions at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and at CERN in Geneva. He will join the Higgs Centre in September.
Congratulations to the team who have been awarded for establishing the JCMB Biolab Sustainability group and for their commitment to sustainable changes in the lab.
A team within the School of Physics and Astronomy have received a Changemaker Award from the University’s Social Responsibility and Sustainability group for their actions in implementing sustainable changes in the School’s laboratories.
Colleagues Neil Corsie, Patricia Gonzalez, Rosa Santomartino and Tracy Scott and have been awarded for their commitment to establishing a JCMB Biolab Sustainability group. The work they have carried out so far includes:
- providing comprehensive training on the disposal of laboratory waste
- establishing recycling bins in each laboratory
- reducing single-use plastic
- implementing energy-saving initiatives.
The Changemaker Award recognises current students and staff who have made a noticeable positive impact by undertaking an impactful socially responsible or sustainable project, or by inspiring others to act in a more socially responsible or sustainable way.
32 University staff, students, societies and groups received a Changemaker Award this year.
Findings could have potential use for computing and magnetic memories.
Ever get a stubborn knot in your shoelace that seems nearly impossible to untangle? Topological knots are sort of like shoelace knots, only they are made of magnetic moments. In addition, they have the potential to dramatically improve computing capabilities, information technologies and storage platforms. An international team of scientists involving the University of Edinburgh, Argonne National Laboratory (USA), and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) (USA) have taken work a step further in the quest to harness them.
The tangles of interlaced magnetic fields, called skyrmions, merons, or magnetic textures, are spawned by spinning electrons in certain compounds. One way to visualise these magnetic vortices is to consider the swirl pattern you see when you stir a glass of water.
The team led by Dr Elton Santos from the School of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr Luis Balicas (NHMFL) has shown the swirls in atomically thin layers of a synthetic crystalline compound of iron, germanium, and tellurium (Fe5-xGeTe2).
The researchers discovered that the magnetic vortices happened at and above room temperature, rather than at the extremely cold conditions needed in many technological applications. In addition, the team were able to measure the knots which have different topological characteristics not yet observed at the same compound until now. This could have a potential use in real-world devices, such as smart phones, external hard-drives and computers.
In terms of their detection, Dr Elton Santos explained:
You need to find a way to see the magnetic vortices: to detect their presence through an electrical signal, which creates a readable response like in a magnetic bit. What is surprising in our results is the different character of the vortices, when normally just one type would appear. Basic computing operations may take place if we understand how to switch between one to another.
Because these topological spin textures are measurable, small and stable, they hold promise for use as a basic unit in electronic information storage such as in novel Qubit for quantum technologies. The study of these complex, defect-like magnetic textures and their possible applications has taken off in recent years as physicists examine their potential. This work adds to a striking novelty in terms of topological textures of different types of spin textures at the same material, and their control via electrical/magnetic means.
Dr Santos goes on to explain:
The hybrid character of these spin quasi-particles in a versatile material might create new technologies with tunable information storage at low energy consumption.
Funding from the ESPRC and computer resources from EPCC Cirrus were used to conduct this research. The work features in the cover of this month’s Advanced Materials.
Congratulations to Dr Adam Carnall and Dr Liza Mijovic, recipients of the Chancellor’s Fellows scheme.
Chancellor’s Fellows
The University of Edinburgh is committed to supporting talented early career researchers through the recruitment of Chancellor’s Fellows: a prestigious 5-year tenure track fellowship scheme focused on innovative research.
The 34 Fellows recruited in this round have a vision for future leadership in research and innovation, which may straddle leading a major area of research, forging new industry partnerships, or research-led teaching innovations.
The scheme builds in a focus on research and innovation in the first few years, and over time, Fellows will take up the full range of core academic activities, including teaching and academic leadership.
The Fellows will be recruited as part of a wider cohort and will be supported to achieve their research and leadership ambitions through mentoring, peer support and training opportunities.
Dr Adam Carnall
Dr Carnall's research focuses on the origins of the most massive galaxies in the Universe, studying their formation and evolution during the first few billion years of cosmic history. These massive galaxies follow an extreme evolutionary pathway, forming the majority of their stars very early in cosmic history, then shutting down (or quenching) star-formation activity, with the reasons for this still poorly understood. Dr Carnall will primarily be using data from the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during his Chancellor's Fellowship, having already been successful in winning observing time during the first year of JWST science operations.
Dr Liza Mijovic
Dr Mijovic will lead the development of novel experimental probes of the Higgs mechanism. In our current model of the fundamental particles and their interactions, called the Standard Model, the Higgs mechanism generates the particle masses. Could the Higgs mechanism also answer the major open questions about the Universe, such as those relating to generating masses of dark matter particles? This is a key open problem in particle physics, and Dr Mijovic will seek the answers at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, and at future collider experiments.
The new insights about the parasites' special 'kinetoplast' DNA could support the development of materials in synthetic chemistry.
Microscopy and molecular simulations have led to a study which characterizes the unique DNA structures housed by single-cell parasites called Trypanosomes. The new insights about the parasites' special kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) — made of thousands of interlocking DNA circles — could support the development of materials such as topological gels in synthetic chemistry.
Trypanosome kDNA self-assembles in 2D ‘Olympic-rings-like’ patterns, resembling a medieval chainmail. But little is known about the biophysical mechanisms determining kDNA’s formation, self-assembly and replication.
An international team, including Dr Davide Michieletto from the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, has harnessed high-resolution imaging techniques and molecular dynamics simulations to reveal new information about kDNA’s structure.
They measured the mean number of DNA rings interlinked to any one ring is around three, and propose that these connections are regulated in vivo to ensure kDNA integrity during replication while avoiding redundant interlocks. Based on their measurements, the researchers were able to estimate that the bending rigidity of kDNAs is thousands of times smaller than that of fatty vesicles. This result means that kDNAs are expected to behave as 'ultrasoft' materials.
According to the authors, enhanced knowledge about the self-assembly of such unusual and rare structures could support the design of ultrasoft 2D materials in synthetic chemistry, such as 'topological' gels which could be made of interlocked structures rather than chemical crosslinks.
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Researchers observing with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified features in the atmosphere of planet VHS 1256 b.
Researchers observing with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed silicate cloud features in the atmosphere of distant planet VHS 1256 b. They have also identified that the planet’s atmosphere is constantly rising, mixing, and moving during its 22-hour day, bringing hotter material up and pushing colder material down. The resulting brightness changes are so dramatic that it is the most variable planetary-mass object known to date. Researchers also made extraordinarily clear detections of water, methane and carbon monoxide with Webb’s data, and found evidence of carbon dioxide. This is the largest number of molecules ever identified all at once on a planet outside our solar system.
Prof Beth Biller from the School’s Institute for Astronomy was part of the research team, which was led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona.
Planet VHS 1256 b is about 40 light-years away and orbits not one, but two stars over a 10,000-year period. It is about four times farther from its stars than Pluto is from our Sun, which means the planet’s light is not mixed with light from its stars.
VHS 1256 b has low gravity compared to more massive brown dwarfs, which means that its silicate clouds can appear and remain higher in its atmosphere where Webb can detect them. Part of the reason why its skies are so turbulent is the planet’s age: in astronomical terms, it’s quite young - only 150 million years have passed since it formed - and it will continue to change and cool over billions of years.
The research team considers these findings to be the first “coins” in a treasure chest of data. They’ve only begun identifying its contents however, and better understanding of which silicate grain sizes and shapes match specific types of clouds is going to take a lot of additional work.
The team came to these conclusions by analyzing spectra gathered by two instruments aboard Webb: the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Although all of the features the team observed have been spotted on other planets elsewhere in the Milky Way by other telescopes, other research teams typically identified only one at a time. There will be plenty more to learn about VHS 1256 b in the months and years to come as this team – and others – continue to sift through Webb’s high-resolution infrared data.
Beth Biller commented:
There’s a huge return on a very modest amount of telescope time. With only a few hours of observations, we have what feels like unending potential for additional discoveries.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
