School of Physics and Astronomy

Astronomers have used observatories around the world to study asteroid 1998 KY26, revealing it to be almost three times smaller and spinning much faster than previously thought.

Asteroid 1998 KY26

An international team of researchers used observatories around the world to study asteroid 1998 KY26 to support the preparation of the future Hayabusa2 mission. Because the asteroid is very small and, hence, very faint, studying it required waiting for a close encounter with Earth and using large telescopes, like the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert. 

Researchers from the Institute for Astronomy were involved in determining the size of the asteroid using ESO’s VLT observations, models gathered from the international team, and by reprocessing archival radar data. The Edinburgh contribution was crucial because, while other techniques could constrain how fast the object rotates and what its composition is, adding the radar data allowed the team to determine the size with meter-level precision.

Hayabusa2 spacecraft mission

Asteroid 1998 KY26 is set to be the final target asteroid for the Japanese Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA)'s Hayabusa2 spacecraft.

In its original mission, Hayabusa2 explored the 900-metre-diameter asteroid 162173 Ryugu in 2018, returning asteroid samples to Earth in 2020.

With fuel remaining, the spacecraft was sent on an extended mission until 2031, when it’s set to encounter 1998 KY26 which measures just 11 metres in diameter - the first time a space mission encounters such a tiny asteroid.

Outcomes

With the ability to characterise such small objects, astronomers can identify further such objects in the future. The team believes this could have impact on future near-Earth asteroid exploration or even asteroid mining.

Researchers share insights that should help those who are particularly untidy.

Have you ever spent too much time searching for your lost keys? Retracing your steps from the start may seem like the obvious solution, but have you ever considered an alternative search strategy?

Recent insights reveal that taking a step back and starting afresh at random intervals, rather than sticking to a set routine, could be the trick to finding misplaced items more efficiently.

Search problems are ubiquitous in nature: from animals foraging for food to the search of biomolecules for targets inside living cells.  One effective search strategy is to reset the search every so often and start anew. The idea has proven useful in many different contexts, including optimizing the performance of computer algorithms, chemical reactions and biophysical processes.  In a nutshell, resetting stops the search from wandering off in the wrong direction.

Resetting has been of particular interest in the statistical physics community where it provides a paradigm of nonequilibrium dynamics: by continually restarting some complex process, the process is never allowed to equilibrate. A particularly appealing mathematical model is diffusion, perhaps the simplest and most common process in nature, with the addition of resetting.

Researchers Professor Martin Evans and Dr Somrita Ray (Elizabeth Gardner Fellow) wanted to investigate when resetting a diffusive search at random intervals (stochastic resetting) is advantageous compared to resetting at fixed intervals (sharp restart). They were able to prove mathematically and substantiate with computer simulations that stochastic resetting is the superior strategy when the distribution of the target of the search is broad. Moreover, they provided a formula determining the target distribution to which a resetting protocol is best suited.

To understand the target distribution, let’s return to the everyday example of searching for one's keys (the target). Usually when we go to retrieve our keys, they are not there and are instead located at some random distance from where they should be, how far depending on how untidy we are.  Thus being untidy implies a broad target distribution.

We conclude that for those who tend to be on the untidy side, applying this random reset method can drastically improve your chances of locating lost items!

The School has announced the names of the research students who have produced the best PhD thesis.

The School awards annual prizes to postgraduate research students who have produced the best PhD thesis in each of the research areas. The prizes come with a cash award of £1000. The prizes are awarded in 2025 for research work successfully defended in 2024.

The winners are:

Many congratulations to all recipients.

Professor Andrzej Szelc has been elected as spokesperson for an international collaboration focused in neutrino detection.

The experiment, known as the Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND), records over a million neutrino interactions per year and is essential for studying neutrino oscillations. It will preform precise measurements of neutrino interactions and search for new particles that might be hidden within the neutrino  beam. Located at Fermilab, America's particle physics and accelerator laboratory, the experiment started collecting data in December last year and has already acquired the largest sample of neutrino interactions on argon in the world.

Fermilab is home to a number of particle physics experiments, aimed at understanding the smallest building blocks of matter, and therefore helping answer fundamental questions on what are we made of, how the universe began, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

The SBND experiment is a collaboration of around 220 physicists from 41 institutions from the US, UK, Brazil, Spain and Switzerland, and will continue acquiring data at least until 2027, when the accelerator complex will shut down for two years to install an upgrade needed for the future DUNE experiment. Professor Andrzej Szelc will lead the SBND as its spokesperson for a two-year term.

He is the first spokesperson elected from outside the USA.

Professor Andrzej Szelc said: 

SBND is an amazing detector that will acquire an unprecedented amount of data and, thanks to the diligent work of many scientists around the World, will be able to extract physics measurement with fantastic precision. It is also a very fun collaboration to work in, with many great contributions from early career researchers:  students, post-docs – several of them from Edinburgh – that make this an excellent place to work in. It is a great honour to be elected as the SBND spokesperson and help lead the experiment in this extremely exciting period of data taking and first results. 

Professor Andrzej Szelc joined the University of Edinburgh in December 2020. Most of his career has been spent working on developing liquid argon detectors to search for rare processes. He has been part of the Fermilab liquid-argon neutrino programme since 2011 and has worked on measurements of electron-neutrino cross sections, searches for beyond the standard model particles, as well as developing applications for scintillation light in these detectors.

Discovery of a new way protein helps to organise DNA inside our cells.

Researchers have discovered a groundbreaking method in which the ‘structural maintenance of chromosomes’ (SMC) protein helps to organise DNA inside our cells.

Using advanced imaging techniques and computer simulations, the team which includes researchers from the University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde and Seoul National University, uncovered that the shape and binding of SMC proteins enable them to control DNA loops efficiently, without making too many mistakes.

The teams found that SMC proteins have a unique geometric shape, which naturally directs them to form DNA loops in a specific direction and orientation. This geometric constraint may be crucial for arranging genetic material but wasn't fully understood before. This study offers insights that could apply to many organisms, enhancing our understanding of genome organisation.

Dr Davide Michieletto, Royal Society Research Fellow commented:

SMC proteins have recently been discovered to perform so-called ‘loop extrusion’ but no one understands how they do it so effectively in the crowded and entangled environment of a cell’s nucleus. In this study we provide experimental and computational evidence that SMC structure itself may guide efficient loop extrusion by imposing a geometric constraint on its angular motion. We argue that anisotropy and broken detailed balance are the necessary ingredients to explain SMC efficient loop extrusion in vitro and in vivo.

The findings are published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research where they are highlighted as a ‘breakthrough paper’ – the top 1% most influential papers in the field. The journal states that such articles appear to solve a long-standing problem in their field or provide exceptional new insight and understanding into an area of research that will clearly motivate and guide new research opportunities and directions.

Professor Cait MacPhee advocates for biofilms innovation with policy makers.

The impact of biofilms on our environment

Did you know biofilms can both protect our planet and pose significant challenges? Professor Cait MacPhee dived into the dual nature of biofilms and their impact on our environment, as she shared insights with policymakers at the House of Commons.

This was part of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee’s ‘Under the Microscope’ inquiry, which received over 300 submissions.

Cait MacPhee, a Professor of Biological Physics and the Edinburgh Co-Director of the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC), outlined the significant positive and negative impact that biofilms have on our environment. She was one of six experts selected to give oral evidence to the committee.

During her presentation she advocated for the government to review the national infrastructure which could facilitate innovation and its exploitation to manage and engineer these biofilms. A significant proposal was the establishment of a biobank containing realistic biofilms for validation and standardised testing and regulation of biofilm technologies.

Waste recovery from historic landfills

Professor MacPhee’s work with policy makers does not stop at Westminster; she has been awarded the Science, Evidence and Policy Active Learning (SEPAL) Fellowship as a secondee to advise the Scottish Government.

This fellowship focuses on recovering critical raw materials from waste, exploring leading-edge technologies, and maximising resource recovery, particularly targeting historic landfill sites.

By improving communication between researchers and policymakers, scientific findings could be effectively translated into practical policies, with a goal of mitigating the impact of biofilms to promote a healthier, more sustainable environment.

Congratulations to Dr Nils Hermansson Truedsson who has been awarded the prestigious Ernest Rutherford Fellowship by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Hadrons as a portal to new physics

Theoretical physicist Dr Nils Hermansson Truedsson studies the building blocks of matter—tiny particles called hadrons, made of quarks and gluons. His research explores the strong force, one of nature’s fundamental forces, to understand how it shapes these particles. By using powerful simulations and mathematical tools, his work is helping to reveal whether this force might also offer clues to new physics beyond our current theories.

Despite its success, the Standard Model leaves several fundamental questions unanswered such as the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. Dr Hermansson Truedsson’s research uses hadrons as precision tools to test the Standard Model and search for signs of new physics.

Dr Hermansson Truedsson will lead a high-impact programme that bridges analytical and computational approaches, with his work opening new pathways for indirect searches for unknown particles and forces.

Supporting the next generation

The STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship programme is designed to reward talented researchers at UK universities and who are poised to make landmark contributions in physics. This fellowship will help develop their careers and push the boundaries of their field.

Researchers have developed a novel computational method that combines real diffraction data on the structure of materials with first principles quantum mechanical calculations. This may lead to breakthroughs in how we design and use materials in the future.

Basic principles

A key tenet of physics is that the structure of any given material determines its properties.

This principle forms the basis for most of contemporary research into all kinds of materials, whether we are thinking about concrete setting on pavements, the durability and performance of prosthetic implants, or the efficiency of drugs and their action mechanisms.

A significant impediment to understanding material properties comes from the fact that the structures themselves are intrinsically-dependent on the physical properties of their constituent atoms, and the motions of electrons about them.

The best currently available measurements for the structure of a material involve the simultaneous measurement of millions of billions of billions of atoms (~10²³), while highly accurate quantum mechanical calculations of atomic and electronic properties can deal at most with hundreds of atoms (10²-10³), owing to the extreme computational cost required for this level of accuracy. 

Computational approach

Researchers from the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) and the Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Physics (ICMCS) have taken a big step forward by merging real diffraction data with quantum calculations.

The new computational approach offers a holistic, multiscale view of disordered materials such as glasses and fluids, from large-scale, bulk structural correlations, down to the properties of the constituent atoms and their electronic state.

Implemented in a unified software framework, the new method enables direct, on-the-fly feedback between interpretation of experimental measurements and highly accurate quantum mechanical principles.

The broad range of applicability is showcased through case studies ranging from simple fluids (krypton), through atomic (silica) and molecular glasses (amorphous ice), to complex mixtures such as water-methanol.

The framework provides scientists with a novel way to study disordered systems, enabling them to discover previously unexplored structure-property relations and emergent phenomena in complex materials.

Next steps

The new method aims to break down the longstanding divide between experiments and theory, combining the strengths of both to get the best possible understanding of the material of interest. It is hoped that this leads to a less strenuous route from material discovery and characterisation to useful applications across industry and society.

Funding has been received to create an international partnership to undertake training and research to understand biological complexity.

The School of Physics and Astronomy has been awarded €4.5M of funding from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions to coordinate an international doctoral network. The network will consist of 12 European universities and research centres along with a number of non-academic partners.

Known as ‘Coherent Analysis Framework for Emergence in Biological Systems’, or ‘CAFE-BIO’ for short, the network will recruit and train fifteen doctoral candidates, each gaining a distinct theoretical perspective on complex biological systems.

Doctoral training

A notable feature of the programme is that each doctoral candidate will collaborate with researchers from two different academic institutions, combining previously separate techniques in innovative ways.

Also, each institution will lead on different problems inspired by biological systems. For example, one group, led from Barcelona, will develop new models capable of describing the full complexity of living matter, incorporating interactions that are absent in traditional condensed matter systems. A second group, led from Leiden, seeks to develop reliable methods to determine how such interactions play out macroscopically and govern an organism’s function. Finally, a group led from Warsaw will apply state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to aid the design of predictive models of complex biological systems. 

The cumulative effect of these endeavours will be to create a framework, firmly grounded in physical principles, that can be applied systematically to understanding the numerous forms of biological complexity.

Doctoral Candidates will also benefit from training provided by several non-academic partners, including University of Edinburgh spin-out Dyneval.

Recruitment

Recruitment for the fifteen positions will open in February 2026 with PhD research commencing in autumn 2026.

Partner institutions

This collaboration builds on a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Georg-August Universität Göttingen and the Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (also in Göttingen) that was supported by the government of Lower Saxony and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Further universities and research centres included in the partnership are:

• CEA Saclay
• CNR Rome
• Dioscuri Centre, Warsaw
• TU Eindhoven
• University of Barcelona
• University of Leiden
• University of Luxembourg
• University of Stuttgart
• VU Amsterdam

Non-academic partners include:

• Bacteromic (Poland)
• Dyneval Ltd (UK)
• Indiscale GmbH (Germany)
• Netherlands e-Science Center

Congratulations to postdoctoral research associate Dr Sophia Flury who has been awarded a PhD thesis prize from the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Dr Flury completed her PhD in the field of Astronomy. Her thesis, titled ‘Clearing the Path to Cosmic Reionization’, has been recognised for its outstanding contribution to the field.

The IAU PhD Prize recognises the exceptional scientific achievements of astronomy PhD students worldwide. Each of the IAU’s nine Divisions awards a prize to the candidate it identifies as having carried out the most remarkable work in the previous year. Sophia’s prize falls under the Division of ‘Galaxies and Cosmology’.

Sophia is currently working at the School’s Institute for Astronomy on characterising how feedback shapes galaxy evolution and the reionization of the Universe.