School of Physics and Astronomy

School of Physics researchers will be part of an EU-wide extravaganza of discovery, debate and entertainment on Friday 26th September.

• PhD student Natasha Nicholson will be one of the performers at “Steampunk Science”, a sci-fi treatment of some of today’s most innovative research.
• The Soft Matter Group will give visitors a chance to see behind the scenes of JCMB in a Doors Open Day preview,
• EPCC will keep younger audiences entertained as part of Meet the Experts @ Our Dynamic Earth, with activities covering "Supercomputers to Dinosaurs".
• Victoria Martin and other members of the Particle Physics Experiment group will be at Meet the Experts @ The National Museum of Scotland from 1-4.30pm with activities on "The Higgs Boson and Beyond".

Further information

Find out more on the website: www.explorathon.co.uk

EU Researchers’ Night in Scotland is led by the University of Aberdeen, with partners at the universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Glasgow. The programme is funded by the European Commission and will run until the end of 2015.

A collaboration between the School and Edinburgh College of Art has resulted in an award-winning photograph.

School lab managers Sarah Brown and Joe Rendle worked with Product Design student Joshua Notley to produce "Floral attraction: A world without bees".

The photograph won second prize in the Agri-Science category of the ‘Picture This’ competition run by Edinburgh Research and Innovation, which invited Edinburgh staff and students to submit images in a range of categories relating to the University’s research activities.

"The photograph was taken for Joshua Notley's course work for his studies at ECA in collaboration with technical support and editing from Joe and myself, so Josh is the creative one although we all have an interest in photography." Sarah Brown

"Floral attraction: A world without bees"

A Van de Graaf generator produces a strong electrostatic charge. This photograph illustrates the generator attracting a stream of pollen onto its metal dome. We propose an idea utilising similar technology for the collection of pollen from plants. In an environmental landscape where bee populations are dwindling the sustained pollination of plants should be considered.  When the dome of the Van De Graaf generator is earthed the pollen is no longer held in place by the electrostatic force and falls from the surface, ready for collection and dissemination as required.

Researchers have found that the Milky Way is approximately half the weight of the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy.

For the first time, scientists have been able to precisely measure the mass of the galaxy that contains our solar system. They have found that the Milky Way is approximately half the weight of the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, which has a similar structure to our own. The Milky Way and Andromeda are the two largest in a region of galaxies which astronomers call the Local Group. 

A team of scientists led by the University of Edinburgh used recently-published data on the known distances between galaxies in the Local Group – as well as their velocities – to calculate the total masses of Andromeda and the Milky Way. Previous studies were only able to measure the mass enclosed within both galaxies’ inner regions. In this new study, researchers were also able to work out the mass of invisible matter found in the outer regions of both galaxies, and reveal their total weights. They say 90 per cent of both galaxies’ matter is invisible.

“We always suspected that Andromeda is more massive than the Milky Way, but weighting both galaxies simultaneously proved to be extremely challenging. Our study combined recent measurements of the relative motion between our galaxy and Andromeda with the largest catalogue of nearby galaxies ever compiled to make this possible.” Dr Jorge Peñarrubia, School of Physics and Astronomy, who led the study.

Scientists say that Andromeda’s extra weight must be present in the form of dark matter, a little-understood invisible substance which makes up most of the outer regions of galaxies. They estimate that Andromeda contains twice as much dark matter as the Milky Way, causing it to be twice as heavy. 

Researchers say their work should help them learn more about how the outer regions of galaxies are structured. Although both galaxies appear to be of similar dimensions, until now scientists had been unable to prove which is larger. 

The study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was carried out in collaboration with the University of British Colombia, Carnegie Mellon University and NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. The work was supported by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council. Findings from the study are supported by research led by Jonathan Diaz at the University of Cambridge, which used different data and methods and produced very similar results. 

The School invites expressions of interest from potential applicants for the STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowships and the Royal Society University Research Fellowships. Both schemes provide five years' funding for outstanding researchers.

STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship

Applicants to the STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship must have a PhD and a minimum of five years' research experience from the start of the postgraduate programme leading to the award of a PhD. Holders of a permanent academic position are not eligible.

Royal Society University Research Fellowship

For the Royal Society University Research Fellowship, applicants must have between three and eight years of research experience since their PhD by the closing date of the round.

How to apply

Expressions of interest must include a draft project proposal and a CV. This should be submitted to the admin-researchandfinance [at] ph.ed.ac.uk (Research and Finance team) by Friday, 22nd August 2014.

Candidates submitting after this date cannot be considered.

One hundred high school students recently participated in a week of activities at the University of Edinburgh as part of a summer school organised by the Sutton Trust.

The Sutton Trust identifies and pilots programmes to help non-privileged children; undertakes independent and robust evaluations; and aims to influence Government education policy and education spending to improve educational opportunities for young people from low and middle income homes.

Twenty-four summer students followed the “physics stream” that was organised by researchers from the School of Physics & Astronomy. Each morning, students attended lectures that introduced some of the subjects that are taught at University while in the afternoon a series of workshops allowed them to explore these subjects in more detail.

Physics masterclass

Greig Cowan and Flavia Dias from the School's experimental particle physics group discussed the physics principles that are explored and tested at research laboratories such as CERN. The students were given the chance to analyse some of the data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN during a “physics masterclass”. They were challenged to look through the data to find the characteristic signature of the decay of the Higgs boson, the same particle that was discovered at CERN two years ago! 

Complex systems

Richard Blythe introduced complex interacting systems and the chaotic behaviour they can exhibit. Armed only with dice and pieces of card, the students ran a Monte Carlo model of traders in an economy, and found that even when the rules treated all players equally, a few traders ended up very rich whilst rather more had no money at all. This illustrates the fundamental principle that a physical system is more likely to be in a state with low energy than one with high energy. In turn, this underpins our modern understanding of how structures arise in condensed matter physics.

The impact of supercomputers

David Henty presented an overview of what supercomputers are and their impact on the world. This was followed by a number of practical activities each supervised by a member of EPCC's staff. David showed the students a number of old supercomputer motherboards, indicating the many processors that were previously used to achieve a high performance. Eilidh Troup showed the potential complexity of programming these systems by using a numbered ball sorting algorithm - students were given balls to sort, each of them acting out the part of a different processor. Alistair Grant used a geoboard to show various aspects of networking. Finally Mario Antonioletti had a dinosaur-racing demo where students could configure a model of argentinosaurus, a 4-legged dinosaur. This application shows parallelism being harnessed by running the processing of the configured dinosaur behind the scenes in parallel.

The students were also engaged in the preparation of a poster to present on the last day of the school. All the physics groups were very excited to share their experience with the other participants of the school, which included students interested in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from informatics to philosophy. 

Find out more

The success of this event bodes well for future participation of the School with the Sutton Trust. More information can be found here:
www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-recruitment/widening-participation/projects/stss

Researchers from the School's experimental particle physics group recently organised the 15th International Conference on B-Physics at Frontier Machines (Beauty 2014)

The event was held at the Playfair Library at the University of Edinburgh and supported by the Higgs Centre. The Beauty 2014 conference reviewed results in the field of B-physics and CP-violation, and explored the physics potential of existing and upcoming B-physics experiments at new particle accelerator facilities. The CERN-based LHCb experiment (which comprises a strong Edinburgh group) presented its latest results on the observation of a spin-3 meson, the first time such an object has been observed.

A live video link-up with CERN took place on Thursday, with a dedicated discussion about the physics results being presented in Edinburgh. This gave the general public a chance to hear directly from the scientists making the measurements and to ask them questions. You can watch an online recording of the broadcast.

"Two main results were presented, both from the LHCb experiment that we work on in Edinburgh. The first was the first observation of a heavy flavored spin-3 particle, observed in the decay of a B_s meson. In quantum mechanics, spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by the particle, just like all particles also have a mass. This is the first time that any spin-3 particle has been seen to be produced in B meson decays and shows the power of the LHCb data to perform spectroscopy of heavy flavoured mesons." Dr Greig Cowan, Particle Physics Experiment group.

Confirmation of an exotic resonance composed of 4 quarks was also presented at the conference.

In addition to the LHCb results, the ATLAS, CMS, Belle, BaBar, CDF and D0 experiments also showed their latest measurements, demonstrating the great strength in the field as we work together to understand the fundamental theories of the Universe. Theoretical physicists helped to shed further light on recent interesting and unexpected results by showing how possible new physics theories could accommodate these anomalies. In addition, local PhD students were given the chance to present their own work during a poster session.

“I really enjoyed the conference as it allowed me to get a good overview of many different aspects of my subject. Getting the chance to present my own research to the community, in the form of a poster and short presentation, was excellent experience for thinking about how best to communicate my thesis subject. This will be very useful in the future!" Adam Morris, PhD student, Particle Physics Experiment group

The conference not only allowed the scientists to discuss the latest results, but also gave them the opportunity to socialise together and get to explore Edinburgh, Scottish culture (including whisky) and the surrounding area. You can see the Twitter posts and photos taken during the week here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/beauty2014?src=hash

"Beauty 2014 was a huge success with lots of new results presented. We have received lots of very positive feedback from participants who enjoyed very much the conference which took place in the historic Playfair Library. This venue allowed for easy interactions between scientists with lots of excellent discussion after talks, but also during coffee and lunches. " Prof. Franz Muheim, Particle Physics Experiment group, who chaired the local organising committee.

About LHCb

LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the Universe we inhabit today

Fourteen billion years ago, the Universe began with a bang. Crammed within an infinitely small space, energy coalesced to form equal quantities of matter and antimatter. But as the Universe cooled and expanded, its composition changed. Just one second after the Big Bang, antimatter had all but disappeared, leaving matter to form everything that we see around us — from the stars and galaxies, to the Earth and all life that it supports.

The conference ran from 14th‑18th July 2014 at the Playfair Library in Edinburgh.

Researchers from the School's Particle Physics groups took part in "The Higgs Boson and Beyond" exhibit at the Royal Society Exhibition in London in July.

Fifteen thousand people visited the week-long Summer Science Exhibition, including the general public and school groups as well as evening soirees with Royal Society Fellows and VIPs. The School's Particle Physics Experiment group was heavily involved in the organisation of the exhibition this year.

The exhibit showed how recent measurements at the ATLAS and CMS experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) earned the 2013 Nobel prize for Physics for Peter Higgs and Francois Englert. Demonstrations also explained how the Higgs Boson gives clues to new physics that lies beyond what we already know. This was done through various activities commissioned especially for the exhibit, that allowed visitors to play with (and make) knitted fundamental particles, measure the Higgs mass as 70s physicists would have done, play Spinball to learn about the Higgs spin, and to win prizes by finding rare-decays of the Higgs Boson (in pin-badge form) and much much more.

"It was a great honour to be a part of the Summer Science Higgs boson exhibition! I found it extremely rewarding to see understanding dawn in the eyes of curious children and take part in many fruitful discussions with interested visitors.

"As a scientist, communicating with the public helps remind me of the 'big picture' of the CERN laboratory and its experiments, and I am privileged in turn to grow an excitement for particle physics outside the scientific community." Flavia Dias, Particle Physics Experiment group, School of Physics

Wahid Bhimji co-led the overall exhibition planning, bringing together activities from all 18 particle physics groups in the UK. Flavia Dias led on the online presence, including the popular Twitter feed and Q&A. As well as Flavia and Wahid, Edinburgh group members Victoria Martin and Ben Wynne also demonstrated at the exhibit.

Further information

RSE event website: Summer Science: Higgs Boson

The Higgs Boson and Beyond booklet

The Higgs Boson and Beyond website 

The Higgs Boson and Beyond video

The exhibit and booklet were co-sponsored by the University of Edinburgh and the Higgs Centre, together with the other UK universities involved and STFC.