Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor Catherine Heymans, and black hole hunter Professor Martin Hendry are teaming up to celebrate James Clerk Maxwell – one of the greatest scientists of all time.
James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh and raised in Dumfries and Galloway. The 19th century scientist and mathematician is credited with many achievements, including the theories that explain light and electromagnetism, being the father of electrical engineering and even creating the first colour image. Maxwell’s revolutionary understanding of energy paved the way for technology that is fundamental to life today, from bluetooth to broadband, from mobile phones to microwave ovens. He also laid the foundations for Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Professors Heymans and Hendry will share the life, work and legacy of James Clerk Maxwell at an online event on 10 March which is part of Big Bang, the Dumfries and Galloway festival of space and science. The event will be broadcasted from 14 India Street Edinburgh, the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell, which is now home to a museum containing portraits, manuscripts and books associated with Maxwell, his family and scientific contemporaries. They will also lead a discussion about Maxwell on 11 April as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival, which will be held at the National Museum of Scotland.
Professor Heymans commented:
Martin and I are really looking forward to explaining James Clerk Maxwell’s amazing scientific discoveries, and what they mean for us today. And we'll be bringing things right up-to-date and showing people some of the latest discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics that have been made possible because of his amazing, influential work back in the late 1800s.
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Find out about our MSc degrees in Physics and Astronomy and hear from our students and staff
The School of Physics & Astronomy will take part in the University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Virtual Open Days. Our academic and professional staff will be involved in online information sessions.
School of Physics and Astronomy events will run the following sessions:
- Tuesday 22 March: Introduction to MSc Theoretical Physics and Mathematical Physics 11:00-12:00 UK time
- Tuesday 22 March: Introduction to MSc Particle and Nuclear Physics 13:00-14:00 UK time
- Thursday 24 March: Q&A with Physics MSc students 13:00-14:00 UK time
To book a place visit the Virtual Postgraduate Open Days 2022 page on the University of Edinburgh website.
High-speed winds in space blow biological particles into higher altitudes than previously thought.
For many decades large vertical winds have been observed at high altitudes of the Earth's atmosphere, in the mesosphere and thermosphere layers. These winds are not reproduced by weather models and the mechanism by which they are occurring is not fully understood.
Professor Arjun Berera and PhD student Daniel Brener, from the School’s Particle Physics Theory Group, have shown using theoretical estimates that particles similar in size to viruses could be projected by these strong vertical winds to higher altitudes than previously discovered.
Their studies found that biological particles could be carried more than 120km above the Earth’s surface by such high-speed vertical winds, and may even reach as high as 150km. This is much higher than the 77km altitude that bacteria spores have previously been discovered at.
If biological particles can be found at such high altitudes, it is also suggested that the hypervelocity space dust, which continuously impacts the atmosphere, can propel such particles into deep space. Over aeons, some of these micro-organisms may have landed on other planets, or may have travelled from other planets to Earth.
In their paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the researchers discuss the numerous applications of these results in astrobiology and climate science.
This work further advances the space dust interplanetary atmospheric exchange mechanism theory which was initially proposed by the Particle Physics Theory Group.
Researchers have used a combination of calculations and experimental techniques to prove that at high pressure oil can dissolve in water, but water cannot dissolve in oil.
Everyone knows that water and oil are chemically insoluble, they don’t mix. That's true at the molecular level, but it’s always possible to mix them, as in milk or French Dressing, as an emulsion of small droplets. Even in an emulsion, the droplets contain many millions of a single type of molecule. To determine whether a homogeneous sample is an emulsion or a solution requires information about which molecules are next to which.
Information about this can be obtained by neutron scattering - a method where a beam of neutron particles is deflected in characteristic ways by different atoms and their neighbours. But, for a molecular mixture, the neutrons scattered from the different atom types are all mixed together. This is an example of a so-called "inverse problem", where the only way to proceed is to make a model for the system, and see if it fits the data. Although there isn't enough information in the data to solve the structure, there is enough data to reject most wrong models.
Even in an emulsion, molecules on the surface of a droplet are next to molecules on the other type e.g. in a cube made of one thousand small cubes almost half are on the surface. In real emulsion droplets it is less than a millionth. So the model structure must be made and analysed very carefully to distinguish between a fine emulsion and a true solution. We solved the problem of how to do this, and applied it to a mixture of methane (the simplest oil) and water, with remarkable results.
Under normal conditions, there is demixing - distinct water and methane droplets. But as pressure increases, the methane dissolves in the water droplets, but the water does not dissolve in the methane. The model demonstrates that at the molecular level this can be understood in terms of chemical bonding. Water is held together by a network of hydrogen bonds, so each water molecule has only four nearest-neighbours. This forms an open network which can restructure to accommodate methane molecules creating a solution denser than either water on methane - high density is favoured at high pressure. By contrast, fluid methane forms many, weaker, bonds between molecules: there is no way to create space for dissolved water without breaking bonds.
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Exploiting the behaviour of RNA viruses to help inspire new disinfection processes.
Many RNA viruses like flu are made through a process where their components spontaneously self-assemble. Upon infection they then disassemble again to release the RNA. This means that they live on the edge of thermodynamic stability, holding together just strongly enough to survive in the environment, but ready to fall apart once they make it into a host.
Recent work by colleagues based in the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems suggests a way in which we might be able to exploit this to develop new cleaning or disinfecting processes.
In their Nature Communications paper, the team presents a theoretical model of the electrostatics of viruses near air-saline interfaces. The RNA within a virus is highly negatively charged, but salt ions in the solution usually act to screen the repulsion. When held at an air-water interface, there is no longer sufficient salt in the surroundings to screen the charges, and the increased electrostatic force destabilises the virus, and may cause it to fall apart. This result explains the decades-old observation that gently shaking a virus containing solution is enough to deactivate them, and could inspire new disinfectant formulations.
New research opportunity seeks to encourage greater diversity within the School community.
Fellowship opportunity
The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship supports early-career, postdoctoral researchers in physics and astronomy to prepare themselves for future independent roles in academia and beyond.
The Fellowship is aimed at candidates from backgrounds which are under-represented in the School’s academic community (e.g. gender, minority ethnicity, disability, disadvantaged circumstances, etc.).
Supported by a mentor, the Fellowship aims to provide a collegial environment for researchers to develop their research and submit proposals to secure external research funding (e.g. a 5-year Research Fellowship, such as a Royal Society University Research Fellowship; an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship; or an European Research Council fellowship) and, where appropriate, other external research resources such as telescope/facility time.
The deadline for applications is 17:00, Monday 28 February 2022 (extended from 14 February).
Elizabeth Gardner
The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship honours the outstanding achievements of Elizabeth Gardner (1957 - 1988). Gardner studied Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with first class honours, and was awarded the Tait Medal, Robert Schlapp Prize, and the Class Medal. After studying for a DPhil at the University of Oxford, she later returned to the School of Physics and Astronomy in 1984 as a Research Fellow. Her works on the optimal storage of neural networks have been selected as two of the most influential papers in the 50th anniversary of Journal of Physics A.
Head of School, Professor Jim Dunlop commented:
The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship reflects the commitment of the School towards making our community a supportive, inclusive and rewarding place for all colleagues to work, and our passion for supporting the career development of a diverse range of early career researchers.
Professor Martin Evans, Director of Research, who was a PhD student under Elizabeth Gardner said:
Elizabeth was a brilliant young scientist whose work is still currency today: the 'Gardner Volume' remains a cornerstone of the theory of neural networks and the 'Gardner transition', predicted by Elizabeth in 1985, has recently been confirmed in diverse contexts ranging from jamming of amorphous materials to theoretical ecology. As an early career researcher in Edinburgh, Elizabeth was a thoughtful and caring supervisor, and this fellowship is a fitting tribute to her memory.
Professor Annette Zippelius, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, former collaborator with Elizabeth Gardner commented:
I deeply admire Elizabeth’s work on spin glasses and neural networks. Her computation of the capacity of the perceptron is ground-breaking work for generations to come. It combines sophisticated techniques with a clear view on the relevant physics, a masterpiece so to say. Her work is an outstanding example of a powerful analytical calculation in a field where these are rare. I think it is a great idea to set up a Gardner fellowship in Edinburgh. Elizabeth is definitely a role model for young women in physics and a fellowship in her name will be a powerful tool to promote young women in science.
Sir David Wallace, former Head of Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh:
Elizabeth was an interesting person. On the face of it, when you met her, she was quite shy, quite retiring, very self-effacing, until she started talking about physics and mathematical physics and then she just opened up as a person. She was such a curious and interested person, and Elizabeth had wider curiosity than just fundamental physics, anything that was challenging, really. Her science was strong as is attested by the impact her work has made later, after her death, and the significant legacy she has left.
Professor Giorgio Parisi, Nobel laureate 2021 said:
I regret that I never had the intellectual pleasure to work with Elizabeth. She was a great scientist and she has given fundamental contributions to the development of statistical mechanics. I have spent my last ten years working on problems related to the Gardner transition in glasses and in other systems. The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship is a great idea that I strongly support: we must remember our best scientists.
Professor Bernard Derrida, Collège de France, former collaborator commented:
I certainly very much support the idea of this fellowship in the name of Elizabeth. Working with Elizabeth was both pleasant and very stimulating, she was quick to understand and to push very difficult calculations. She was shy but very friendly and I feel that I was very lucky to collaborate with her and I learnt so much during our collaborations. More than 30 years after her death, we can clearly measure the impact of her work, and given that she did all that before she was 30, one can only imagine what her influence on theoretical physics could have been if she had lived longer. Despite her illness, she made wonderful contributions during the last two years of her life, without complaining or even mentioning her health problems.
Professor Catherine Heymans has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s (RAS) Herschel medal for her ground-breaking analysis of the evolution of large-scale structures in the Universe using weak gravitational lensing.
Unravelling the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter
Professor Catherine Heymans is an observational cosmologist, internationally recognised as a key founder of the use of weak gravitational lensing as a cosmological tool. This medal is in recognition of her recent work (see link below) leading an international team of researchers in their detailed analysis that combined spectroscopy with optical and near infra-red imaging from the Kilo Degree Survey. Analysing over 30 million galaxies, the team presented state-of-the-art estimates of the fundamental cosmological parameters for the Universe. They found lower values for the clustering of matter today compared to those deduced from observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Together with independent measurements of the Hubble parameter, these ground-breaking results could indicate that our theories of the Dark Universe are missing a fundamental ingredient.
Professor Catherine Heymans’ research seeks to shed light on the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter – elusive entities that together account for more than 95 per cent of the Universe. In 2021 she was awarded the prestigious title of Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and is using this recognition to further share her passion for astronomy with Scots from all walks of life. As well as being a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, she is also the Director of the German Centre for Cosmological Lensing at the Ruhr-University Bochum.
Herschel Medal
The Herschel Medal is awarded for investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics. It is named after Sir William Herschel, the first president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He made significant contributions to the field, including the discovery of Uranus and the first theories for how stars evolved. Previous recipients of the medal include Noble laureates Arno Penzias, Robert Woodrow Wilson and Renhard Genzel, along with the Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy in Edinburgh, Jim Dunlop. This is only the second time in its almost 50 year history that the medal has been awarded to a female astronomer, following the 1989 award to Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell for her discovery of pulsars.
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The School has announced the recipients of medals and awards at an online ceremony.
Congratulations to students who received medals, certificates, prizes and scholarships at the School of Physics & Astronomy online Student Awards Ceremony.
Head of School, Prof Jim Dunlop announced the awards in recognition of excellent performance and achievements from undergraduate and MSc students during the last academic year.
Award winner Aitor Mairena Díaz, who recently completed his MSc in Mathematical Physics, gave a talk outlining his academic journey during the pandemic and shared the highlights of his degree.
Year 2 student and award winner Ioanna Moirasgenti thanked staff and peers for their academic and pastoral support which help her make the most of living and studying in Edinburgh.
Certificates & Medals
144 pre-honours students received Certificates of Merit for their achievement in Physics and Mathematical Physics courses. A total of 31 Class Medals were awarded to the students with the highest overall mark for their degree programme.
5 Class Medals were also awarded to MSc students.
Prizes and Scholarships
45 Prizes and Scholarships were awarded to undergraduate students who achieved the highest results in their subject area.
Many congratulations to all recipients.
Astronomers are closer to revealing the dark matter enveloping our Milky Way galaxy, thanks to a new map of twelve streams of stars orbiting within our Galactic halo.
Understanding these star streams is very important for astronomers. As well as revealing the dark matter that holds the stars in their orbits, they also tell us about the formation history of the Milky Way, revealing that the Milky Way has steadily grown over billions of years by shredding and consuming smaller stellar systems.
An international team of collaborators, which includes Dr Sergey Koposov, reader in observational astronomy in the School of Physics and Astronomy, initiated a dedicated program - the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5) - to measure the properties of stellar streams: the shredded remains of neighbouring small galaxies and star clusters that are being torn apart by our own Milky Way.
The team, led by Prof Ting Li from the University of Toronto, are the first group of scientists to study such a rich collection of stellar streams, measuring the speeds of stars using the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), a 4-meter optical telescope in Australia. They used the Doppler shift of light, used by the police radar guns to capture speeding drivers, to find out how fast individual stars are moving.
Observations from the European Gaia space mission were also used. These enabled astronomers to efficiently identify individual stars belonging to streams among much more populous stellar populations of the Milky Way.
The properties of stellar streams reveal the presence of the invisible dark matter of the Milky Way. Such observations are essential for determining how our Milky Way arose from the featureless universe after the Big Bang.
The latest results have been accepted for publication in the American Astronomical Society’s Astrophysical Journal.
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Congratulations to Dr Carlo Bruno and Dr Fergus Cullen who have received European Research Council starting grants.
The European Research Council (ERC) has announced recipients of its Starting Grants under the Research and Innovation programme, Horizon Europe. Grants worth on average €1.5 million will help ambitious researchers launch their own projects, form their teams of postdoctoral researchers and PhD students, and pursue their research ideas.
Dr Carlo Bruno
Carlo's research focuses on measuring nuclear reactions of key importance to understand the origin of the elements from the Big Bang to supernovae. This involves collaboration with colleagues at the international accelerator facility FAIR based in Germany and the largest European underground accelerator in Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy.
Dr Fergus Cullen
Fergus' research is focussed on the chemical evolution of galaxies across cosmic time, tracing the formation and build up of chemical elements from the Big Bang until the present day. These studies will help us to gain insight into how galaxies formed and evolved over the 13.8 billion years of the Universe's history, and enable us to understand how the Universe became enriched with the elements necessary for life to evolve. Fergus' research will be conducted using state-of-the-art ground-based and space-based telescopes, including the recently-launched James Webb Space Telescope which will become operational in mid-2022.