School of Physics and Astronomy

Edinburgh hosted the fourth year of the Astrobiology Academy. This continuing professional development event, set up by the UK Centre for Astrobiology, takes astrobiology into secondary schools and uses the subject to teach fundamental science.

Since its foundation, the Astrobiology Academy has produced lesson plans for UK secondary schools that this year were assembled into astrobiology units for year-long teaching blocks. The Academy's lesson plans have been downloaded over 5000 times by teachers and cover subjects from astronomy to biology.

This year 13 teachers came to Edinburgh to listen to astrobiology lectures, write lesson plans and gain expertise in teaching the subject. The academy was supported by the National Space Centre and was attended by Susan Buckle of the UK Space Agency.

Next year the academy will offer one day astrobiology continuing professional development events as well as its residential course, and will extend astrobiology teacher-training to primary school teachers.

Who can attend?

The Astrobiology Academy is open to science teachers and anyone with a science/technology background and good writing skills who are enthusiastic and self-motivated with interests in the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, geology, astronomy or engineering.  Applicants are expected to work together to create and edit astrobiology-based lesson plans for secondary schools.  If you are excited by the idea of this science opportunity then register your interest for 2017 now!

More information and lesson plans can be found at www.astrobiologyacademy.org

School staff have taken part in several science outreach events this summer.

Royal Society summer science exhibition

Members of the LHCb group within experimental particle physics helped to organise the “Antimatter matters” exhibit at the Royal Society summer science exhibition from 4-10th July this year.

We know that matter and antimatter were produced in equal amounts during the Big Bang, but now everything we see in the Universe (stars, planets, dust) appears to be made of matter. Understanding where all of the antimatter has gone is one of the key unanswered questions of science. The exhibit aimed to explain how the properties of antimatter are being studied in detail by the LHCb and ALPHA experiments at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics. Both experiments are making precision measurements to search for differences between matter and antimatter that might help explain the large asymmetry we observe in the Universe.

Dr Greig Cowan, STFC Ernest Rutherford research fellow and member of the LHCb collaboration, edited and produced the exhibit booklet as well as demonstrating at the event, both during the public sessions and at one of the black tie “soirées” for fellows and guests of the Royal Society.

"It was great to see so many people at the event interested in science and particle physics in particular.” Dr Greig Cowan

 You can see more details of the exhibit at the website, as well as other photos and videos on Twitter and Facebook. See links below.

Heavy flavours on Islay

Members of the Edinburgh particle physics group took part in a week of physics meetings and public outreach on Islay. From 10-14th July, the Edinburgh group hosted the “Heavy Flavour 2016 - Quo Vadis?” workshop in the Ardbeg distillery on Islay, where the topic of discussion was the future direction of research for heavy flavour physics, so-called as it involves the study of the heavy beauty and charm quarks that are produced in large numbers at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Around 30 participants attended the workshop.

"With so many new measurements from the Large Hadron Collider  and many more expected during the next decade, it is time to reflect. At this workshop speakers were asked to discuss the future of heavy flavour physics and Islay provided an excellent venue for this, as both the topic and the location involved heavy flavours,  beauty and charm." Prof Franz Muheim, who currently holds a Senior Experimental Fellowship from the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP) at Durham University which provided funds for this workshop.

“It has been a long-term goal for us to have a focussed workshop in a remote location to allow us to discuss the latest developments and future directions of heavy flavour physics. Islay was the perfect choice, not least because of it’ own local “heavy flavoured” spirits." Dr Greig Cowan, STFC Ernest Rutherford research fellow.

Particle Physics for Scottish Schools go to Islay

In parallel with the workshop the group organised a series of public outreach events at Islay High School together with Dr Alan Walker, Director of Particle Physics for Scottish Schools (PP4SS), and the local Science teacher, Russell Pollock. This comprised three joint exhibitions: Particle Physics for Scottish Schools Exhibition, From Higgs to Maxwell Exhibition (Royal Society Edinburgh) and I-SAT: Islay Space and Astronomy Tour.

For PP4SS, this is the third visit to the Scottish Highlands and Islands in as many years, after a very successful series of events in Plockton in 2014 and the Orkney International Science Festival in 2015. The PP4SS exhibition, which was mainly developed with funding from a Science and Society Large Award from the former Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, includes several hands-on exhibits demonstrating the working of particle accelerators and experimental detectors. It also outlines the key areas in particle physics research and The University of Edinburgh's involvement in these efforts. Assisted by experienced demonstrators, the visitors were able to walk through a Cosmic Ray Doorway, drive the CERN's LHC accelerator, determine experimentally the life-time of the muon a fundamental particles, and observe particle tracks in a cloud chamber and much more.

"We are very pleased to yet again visit a more remote Scottish community and talk to local people about particle physics and how such cutting-edge research affect all our daily lives.  We are in particular proud of meeting many young people, who may later on decide to study physics and become researchers themselves. Quite often they say visiting our exhibition was a contributing factor in making such choices." Alan Walker, Director of PP4SS

Islay Space & Astronomy Tour

Islay Space and Astronomy Tour (I-SAT), is a new invited project by Matjaz Vidmar, our school's alumni of and currently a PhD student in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, also at the University of Edinburgh. Matjaz is often involved in outreach events and for this occasion he developed an interactive display related to his research, which concerns the applications of basic research and innovation partnerships between scientists and local entrepreneurs in the Space Industry in Scotland.

"It was a privilege to be part of the particle physics outreach activities again and I believe these initiatives are absolutely vital for inspiring high school students in remote parts of Scotland to consider science as their future careers." Matjaz Vidmar, who received an Institute of Physics in Scotland Public Engagement Grant to enable his participation

The series of events also included a public session with presentations by Professor Franz Muheim on "Higgs Bosons, Antimatter and all that" and Matjaz Vidmar on "Astrotechnology - and how it changed the World", which was well attended by the local community.

The Particle Physics Experiments (PPE) group and PP4SS project are very grateful for the work put into supporting this outreach event by Brian Cameron of the School of Geosciences and our dedicated volunteers Dr Konstantina Zerva, Alice Morris and Julija Pustovrh, and for the generous hospitality of the Islay High School, Bowmore.

The School's Prof. Richard Kenway has been elected to the council of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Professor Kenway was appointed to the Tait Chair of Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh in 1994. His research explores non-perturbative aspects of theories of elementary particles using computer simulation of lattice gauge theories, particularly the strong interactions of quarks and gluons described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). He led UK participation in the QCDOC project to build three 10 teraflop/s computers to simulate QCD, jointly with the USA and Japan, and these machines operated successfully from 2004 to 2011. In 2002, he initiated the International Lattice Data Grid project, which provides a global infrastructure for sharing simulation data.

As Vice-Principal, Professor Kenway is responsible for the University’s provision of UK high-performance computing services and for promoting advanced computing technologies, computational and data science to benefit academia and industry. For ten years, until it closed in 2011, his responsibilities included the UK National e-Science Centre. In the Queen’s 2008 Birthday Honours, Professor Kenway was awarded an OBE for services to science. He led the establishment of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and chaired it from 2010 to 2012. He is a founder member of the UK e-Infrastructure Leadership Council and a Trustee of the Alan Turing Institute.

Mr Alan Walker, a former lecturer in the School, has been awarded an Honorary Degree in recognition of his services to science education.

Alan first started in 1993  by working with schools and professional bodies on an individual basis but in 2001 he formalised this into the “SCI-FUN” roadshow. Here, a small team, with Alan as scientific advisor, constructed a set of 40-50 hands-on exhibits which could be taken on tour as a mobile science education centre. SCI-FUN has now visited over 600 sites throughout Scotland and the north of England, attracting over 200,000 members of the public.

Building on SCI-FUN’s success, Alan started the PP4SS (Particle Physics for Scottish Schools) project in 2004. His goal was to find a way to create a series of connected exhibits to describe the work being carried out at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and to introduce people to the discovery of particles from space, ‘cosmic rays’. The project developed exhibits to show the basic principles of particle accelerators, including real-time detection of cosmic ray muons. Alan’s innovation was the creation of small hands-on exhibits connected to a story and presented by enthusiastic science students.  PP4SS has reached some 20,000 members of the public, including 2,500 school pupils, and there are now plans to take a version of the roadshow to India. He has also been heavily involved in publicly explaining the significance of the discovery of a Higgs-like Boson.

Alan is a regular participant at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, and has also been involved with an experiment to demonstrate Einstein’s relativistic time-dilation at the top of the Cairngorm mountain railway. 

"Alan’s passion is education and through a sustained programme he has inspired an enormous number of people. He conveys excitement, but eschews showmanship. At a time when much science outreach has become superficial entertainment, Alan has remained committed to explanation, responding with unlimited patience to questions from anyone with a genuine desire for an answer." Prof. Arthur Trew, Head of the School of Physics & Astronomy

Some galaxies pump out vast amounts of energy from a very small volume of space, typically not much bigger than our own solar system. The cores of these galaxies, so called Active Galactic Nuclei or AGNs, are often hundreds of millions or even billions of light years away, so are difficult to study in any detail. Natural gravitational ‘microlenses’ can provide a way to probe these objects, and now a team of astronomers have seen hints of the extreme AGN brightness changes that hint at their presence. Leading the microlensing work, PhD student Alastair Bruce of the University of Edinburgh presents their work today (Friday 1 July) at the National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham.

The energy output of an AGN is often equivalent to that of a whole galaxy of stars. This is an output so intense that most astronomers believe only gas falling in towards a supermassive black hole – an object with many millions of times the mass of the Sun - can generate it. As the gas spirals towards the black hole it speeds up and forms a disc, which heats up and releases energy before the gas meets its demise.

Scientists are particularly interested in seeing what happens to the gas as it approaches the black hole. But studying such small objects at such large distances is tricky, as they simply look like points of light in even the best telescopes. Observations with spectroscopy (where light from an object is dispersed into its component colours) show that fast moving clouds of emitting material surround the disc but the true size of the disc and exact location of the clouds are very difficult to pin down.

Bruce will describe how astronomers can make use of cosmic coincidences, and benefit from a phenomenon described by Einstein’s general theory of relativity more than a century ago. In his seminal theory, Einstein described how light travels in curved paths under the influence of a gravitational field. So massive objects like black holes, but also planets and stars, can act to bend light from a more distant object, effectively becoming a lens.

This means that if a planet or star in an intervening galaxy passes directly between the Earth and a more distant AGN, over a few years or so they act as a lens, focusing and intensifying the signal coming from near the black hole. This type of lensing, due to a single star, is termed microlensing. As the lensing object travels across the AGN, emitting regions are amplified to an extent that depends on their size, providing astronomers with valuable clues.

Bruce and his team believe they have already seen evidence for two microlensing events associated with AGN. These are well described by a simple model, displaying a single peak and a tenfold increase in brightness over several years. MIcrolensing in AGNs has been seen before, but only where the presence of the galaxy was already known. Now Bruce and his team are seeing the extreme changes in brightness that signifies the discovery of both previously unknown microlenses and AGNs.

“Every so often, nature lends astronomers a helping hand and we see a very rare event. It’s remarkable that an unpredictable alignment of objects billions of light years away could help us probe the surroundings of black holes. In theory, microlensing could even let us see detail in accretion discs and the clouds in their vicinity. We really need to take advantage of these opportunities whenever they arise.”  University of Edinburgh PhD student Alastair Bruce, who leads the microlensing work.

To the depth we can see so far, there are expected to be fewer than 100 active AGN microlensing events on the sky at any one time, but only some will be at or near their peak brightness. The big hope for the future is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a project the UK recently joined. From 2019 on, it will survey half the sky every few days, so has the potential to watch the characteristic changes in the appearance of the AGNs as the lensing events take place.

RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2016

The RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2016 (NAM 2016, http://nam2016.org) takes place this year at the University of Nottingham from 27 June to 1 July. NAM 2016 brings together more than 550 space scientists and astronomers to discuss the latest research in their respective fields. The conference is principally sponsored by the Royal Astronomical Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Follow the conference on Twitter via @rasnam2016

Researchers observe an intermediate stage of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the universe. It’s also the simplest—with only a single electron in each atom. But that simplicity is deceptive, because there is still so much we have to learn about hydrogen.

One of the biggest unknowns is its transformation under the extreme pressures and temperatures found in the interiors of stars and giant planets, where it is squeezed until it becomes liquid metal, capable of conducing electricity. New work published in Physical Review Letters by the University of Edinburgh’s Stewart McWilliams and Carnegie Mellon University's Alexander Goncharov measures the conditions under which hydrogen undergoes this transition in the lab and finds an intermediate state between gas and metal, which they’re calling dark hydrogen.

On the surface of giant planets like Jupiter, hydrogen is a gas. But between this gaseous surface and the liquid metal hydrogen in the planet’s core lies a layer of dark hydrogen, according to findings gleaned from the team’s lab mimicry.

Using a laser-heated diamond anvil cell to create the conditions likely to be found in gas giant planetary interiors, the team probed the physics of hydrogen under a range of pressures from 10,000 to 1.5 million times normal atmospheric pressure and up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

They discovered this unexpected intermediary phase, which does not reflect or transmit visible light, but does transmit infrared radiation.

“This observation would explain how heat can easily escape from gas giant planets like Saturn,” explained Goncharov.

They also found that this intermediary dark hydrogen is somewhat metallic, meaning it can conduct an electric current, albeit poorly. This means that it could play a role the process by which churning metallic hydrogen in gas giant planetary cores produces a magnetic field around these bodies, in the same way that the motion of liquid iron in Earth’s core created and sustained our own magnetic field.

“This dark hydrogen layer was unexpected and inconsistent with what modeling research had led us to believe about the change from hydrogen gas to metallic hydrogen inside of celestial objects,” Alexander Goncharov.

The results are detailed in a paper published in Physical Review Letters.

"In this paper, we measure the conditions where hydrogen becomes a metal inside planets, and observe an intermediate state – dark hydrogen – between the insulating gas and liquid metal.  A dark hydrogen layer in giant planets separates the atmosphere and the metallic interior, and neither reflects nor transmits visible light, but does allow infrared radiation to pass. This indicates heat can easily escape from within giant planets. The dark hydrogen layer also weakly conducts electricity, allowing it to participate in the production of the planetary magnetic field." Stewart McWilliams, Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions, who took part in the study.

The team also included Carnegie’s Allen Dalton and Howard University’s Mohammad Mahmood.

Wilson Poon has been appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy, one of the oldest and most prestigious chairs in the University.

Prof. Poon is internationally known for his work using very well characterised, 'model' colloids to study phenomena that are ubiquitous across condensed matter and statistical physics, particularly the structure and dynamics of arrested states such as glasses and gels. Understanding such states is a grand challenge facing 21st century physics; at the same time, they occur widely in a very large range of industrial processes and products. To exploit the latter connections, he set up the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership to coordinate industrial consultancy, and its clients now span many sectors, from food and confectionaries through personal care to specialty and agri-chemicals. 

"My congratulations to Wilson Poon on winning this extremely prestigious Chair.  I am very excited by the research programme that he has proposed to transform bacteria into Darwinian designers of new types of soft materials. This is a challenging vision but one that will develop new opportunities spanning both academic research and also links to industry." Prof. Arthur Trew, Head of the School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh

Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh

The Chair of Natural Philosophy was established in 1708 and over the past 300 years it has been held by such eminent scientists as Adam Ferguson, John Playfair FRS, James Forbes FRS, Peter Guthrie Tait, the Nobel Laureate Charles Barkla FRS, Norman Feather FRS, William Cochran FRS, FRSE, and, most recently, Michael Cates FRS.

Experiments that seek to recreate conditions found deep inside the Earth are enabling new insights into the evolution of the planet.

Scientists have carried out laboratory studies of iron at very high temperatures and pressures, like those found in the Earth’s core.

This is enabling them to better understand the history of Earth’s magnetic field, which is driven by the behaviour of its outer core – a reservoir of churning liquid iron beneath the planet’s rocky mantle.

Their experiments show that Earth’s magnetic field – which protects life on its surface from harmful radiation from space – might have existed since the planet’s formation. This would have accommodated the spread of primitive forms of life early in Earth’s history.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh used specialist equipment – known as a laser heated diamond anvil cell – to mimic conditions in the Earth’s core. They examined how iron conducts heat at pressures up to 1.3 million times that of the atmosphere, and temperatures above 3000 Celsius.

They found that iron conducted relatively little heat at these conditions, which suggests that Earth’s molten iron core has been cooling very slowly since its formation. This means that Earth has had a magnetic field from the very distant past, when the planet’s interior conditions were much hotter than they are today.

Their findings agree with studies of old rocks that show Earth’s magnetic field has existed for almost the entire age of the planet.

“The magnetic field of Earth can only form under certain conditions, and until recently it was believed these might not have been present early in Earth’s history. We now know that the magnetic field could have existed even in this early era.” Stewart McWilliams, Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions, who took part in the study.

The study, published in Nature, was carried out in collaboration with the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC; the DESY Photon Science Laboratory in Hamburg; the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá; and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Hefei. 

The Edinburgh Soft Matter, Biological and Statistical Physics Group seeks to recruit four postdoctoral research associates (PDRAs) in Biological Physics, to work on a research programme that aims to understand how bacterial populations grow, assemble into spatially structured biofilms, and evolve to become resistant to antibiotics.

In particular the Group is interested in the interplay between resistance evolution and population spatial structure.

"Many of the most chronic and difficult to treat bacterial infections are in the form of biofilms: spatially structured layers of bacteria that form on surfaces such as medical implants. In this research programme we will investigate how the spatial structuring of a bacterial population affects how it responds to antibiotic treatment and how likely it is to generate mutant bacteria that are antibiotic-resistant. We are looking for highly motivated and talented researchers with expertise in experiments, theory or simulations to help us with this exciting research." Project leader Dr Rosalind Allen

The project, which is entitled 'The physics of antibiotic resistance evolution in spatially structured multicellular assemblies’ is funded by the European Research Council. 

Closing date for applications: 1st July 2016.

UK astronomers are celebrating funding to participate in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will create what is being called “the greatest movie ever made”.

When completed, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be the world’s largest digital camera. It will be able to take images of the sky that each cover over 40 times the area of the moon, building up a survey of the entire visible sky in just three nights.

That means that billions of galaxies, stars and solar system objects will be seen for the first time and monitored over ten years, with each patch of sky being observed more than 800 times in that period. UK astronomers will now play a key part after £17.7m of initial funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council confirmed the UK’s participation.

Steven Kahn, the LSST Director, said: “I am delighted that STFC is supporting UK participation in LSST. It is great to see UK astronomers engaging in preparation for LSST, and we look forward to seeing our collaboration develop over the coming years. LSST will be one of the foremost astronomy projects in the next decades and the UK astronomical community will contribute strongly to its success.”

“This is great news for UK astronomy. LSST has long been the missing piece in UK astronomy’s future programme, and funding by STFC for UK participation in LSST will provide our researchers with unparalleled access to the suite of major international facilities that will be coming online in the next 5-10 years”. Bob Mann, LSST:UK Project Leader, University of Edinburgh

Unprecedented detail

The telescope is being built in the Chilean Andes where conditions are some of the driest on Earth, making it the ideal position for observing. When it starts operating, the LSST will generate one of the largest scientific datasets in the world.  

The LSST is a synoptic survey in several ways: billions of objects will be imaged in six colours in an unprecedented large volume of our universe. This survey over half of the sky also records the time evolution of these sources, creating the first motion picture of our universe.

The LSST:UK Project Scientist, Sarah Bridle from the University of Manchester, said: “What is unique about LSST is that each of its images covers a large area of sky to a depth that captures faint objects, and that it takes these images really quickly. That combination of area, depth and speed means that we can do lots of different science with the same dataset. Over its ten years of operations, LSST will build up a very detailed map of billions of galaxies, with approximate distances to each, from which we will learn about the mysterious dark energy that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. But, equally, it will look for changes in the sky from night to night; both moving objects, like asteroids, and new ones, like supernovae, that appear where nothing had been seen before.”

Big Data benefits

As well as providing unprecedented scientific data, the development of LSST will help train future scientists and bring advances in computing.

“Extracting scientific knowledge from LSST will pose major challenges in the management and analysis of data. These “Big Data” issues are seen across the commercial sector as well as in science, but astronomy provides the ideal testbed for addressing them, as our data is free from the ethical and commercial constraints found in other domains. Many from the generation of young researchers who develop their skills preparing for the LSST data deluge will end up applying their expertise in business or the public sector, so the impact of UK participation in LSST will be felt well beyond astrophysics," said Bob Mann.

Edinburgh researchers are at the forefront of addressing the computational challenges posed by LSST. They are developing the Data Access Centre through which UK astronomers will analyse LSST data. This builds upon several decades of expertise in survey astronomy at Edinburgh.

“The Wide-Field Astronomy Unit at Edinburgh has been curating the largest sky survey datasets for a long time, but LSST will be a step up for us. We have just published the latest data release for the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey, which contains over 50 billion rows of data and which we believe to be currently the largest public sky survey dataset in the world. However, that pales in comparison with LSST, whose first data release in 2023 will be about forty times bigger, and which will continue to grow over the following decade. The challenge is not storing the data – bigger databases already exist in the commercial sector – but providing astronomers with the flexible access mechanisms they need to extract astrophysical knowledge from the LSST dataset, with its spatial, spectral and temporal dimensions.” Bob Mann, LSST:UK Project Leader, University of Edinburgh

Preparatory science

In addition to funding development of the Data Access Centre, STFC is also supporting a range of preparatory science being undertaken by a distributed team of researchers in six UK universities on behalf of the 36 institutions in the LSST:UK Consortium. This work is coordinated by LSST:UK Project Manager George Beckett, who is based at the University of Edinburgh.

"Many are talking about data-driven science, but LSST:UK is actually doing it. The preparatory phase in the lead-up to an operational telescope is a critical period. Acting on behalf of the whole consortium we have defined a programme of work, which the Edinburgh team will coordinate, that draws on the world-class expertise of the UK partner institutions . This will ensure that we are ready to exploit the LSST from Day 1."  George Beckett, LSST:UK Project Manager, University of Edinburgh