School of Physics and Astronomy

Congratulations to Dr Cyrielle Opitom who has been appointed a member of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Young Academy of Scotland (YAS) scheme brings together young professionals from all areas of academia, business, third sector organisations and public life, to work together to address the most challenging issues facing society in Scotland and beyond.

Forty eight new members have just been appointed, who will join YAS’s existing members in realising its mission to achieve transformative societal change through citizenship, innovation, collaboration, evidence, and leadership.

Dr Cyrielle Opitom is a Chancellor’s Fellow, based in the School’s Institute for Astronomy. Dr Opitom’s research and expertise focuses on studying small bodies of the solar system and in particular comets. She uses and helps to develop the latest astronomical instrumentation to investigate the composition of comets and to understand what they can teach us about the history of the solar system. Cyrielle is also involved in projects aiming at developing astronomy in Africa.

Festival goers at the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) were treated to a feast for the mind last weekend as Edinburgh physicists Professor Victoria Martin and Dr Alex Hall gave talks at the World of Physics pavilion.

WOMAD festival started in 1980 as the brainchild of musician Peter Gabriel, and takes place near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. The annual festival showcases musicians and performers from around the globe, and since 2016 has also hosted a range of physics events including talks, workshops, demonstrations, and panel discussions.

Professor Martin from the Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics gave a talk celebrating the life and work of the late Professor Peter Higgs. She commented:

It was a great honour to be at WOMAD to talk about Peter Higgs and his legacy to physics and to our world.  I'm sure Peter would have very much appreciated the spirit of the festival of bringing people together to celebrate the arts, science and culture from all over the globe.

Dr Alex Hall from the Institute for Astronomy gave a talk on the Euclid space telescope, showcasing its incredible imaging power and explaining the fundamental physics of dark matter and dark energy that the mission aims to shed light upon.

Dr Hall said:

It was a privilege to be invited to speak at WOMAD. Having science events alongside literature, art, and music exposes people to different ideas and perspectives that they may not usually encounter and is one of the reasons this festival is so special.

Both talks were given to a capacity crowd of several hundred and were very well received by the engaged and captivated audience.

The talks were sponsored by CERN & Society Foundation.

Students on the MSc degree in Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences have been sharing their knowledge and understanding about life on other planets with a video games company.

Auroch Digital, an independent game development company based in Bristol, is creating the video game ‘Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life’, whose players will run a space agency, investigate the solar system and collect evidence of life.

The collaboration, which also involved astrobiology staff, included a number of online meetings and a visit from game developers to the University. Students carried out research and made scientific suggestions to inform in-game scenarios.

A  tour of lab facilities conducted during the visit involved a demonstration of chemical reactions, the viewing of samples including rocks, minerals, organisms and fossils, and a guide to the ‘Mars chamber’, which reproduces the pressure, temperature and atmospheric composition of Mars to see how various materials and processes behave under those conditions.

Students on the interdisciplinary MSc degree in Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences work to understand the nature of life and whether we might find it elsewhere in the universe. They build on their knowledge of  physics, chemistry, biology and geosciences to answer fundamental questions about living matter, how it forms, varies and evolves in concert with planets and stars, and how it is distributed across time and space.

An estimated 3.2 billion people worldwide play video games, making this one of the most popular forms of entertainment. With the steady rise in popularity of gaming over the past few years, there may be further opportunities for collaboration with scientists.

Madeleine Landell, a student on the MSc Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences degree commented:

Collaborating with Auroch on Mars Horizon 2 has been an incredible opportunity. It has both given us astrobiology students a glimpse into the creative and meticulously researched process that goes into videogame development, as well as allowing us to think differently about advances in space science. The Auroch team's dedication to preserving as much real science as possible in the video game was really impressive. They weren't afraid to get into the semantics of molecular biology and geochemistry in their pursuit of a scientifically accurate yet exciting game. We've left this collaboration with renewed excitement about how our current astrobiological research could contribute to the future of space exploration. We really look forward to the release of Mars Horizon 2.

John O’Donnell, Lead Game Designer on Mars Horizon 2 said:

We had so much fun collaborating with the students of the MSc programme. It was a privilege to see and hear about their work and have their influence on the game’s vision and authenticity. The students helped us research many what-if scenarios of life in our solar system and because of their diverse backgrounds this took the game in interesting new directions.

The School of Physics and Astronomy is delighted to welcome Professor Philip Best to the position of Head of School

Professor Best was previously the Head of the Institute for Astronomy within the School of Physics and Astronomy, a post which he undertook for 4 years. 

Professor Best plans to continue building on the successes made within the School during the past few years. Additional priorities include strengthening research impact collaborations, supporting the development of teaching and student support initiatives, fostering a diverse and inclusive environment, and enhancing community engagement.

Professor Best takes over from Professor Dunlop who will devote his Royal Society Research Professorship to work in the area of galaxy formation and evolution.
 

Congratulations to Dr Stewart Gault who has received a Royal Society of Edinburgh grant to support his research in understanding how bacteria survives at low temperatures.

The Small Research Grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) covers the costs arising from a defined research project and encourages high-quality research and academic innovation.

The limits of life

One of the major goals in astrobiology is discerning the limits to life and how life has adapted to extreme environments, thereby informing us as to whether extreme environments found beyond Earth are potentially capable of supporting life.

Understanding the habitability of subzero temperature environments is particularly important as the icy moons Europa and Enceladus contain vast quantities of liquid water. However, we do not know what the low temperature limit for life is, or whether it is set by one factor or a combination of factors.

Record holder

The current record holder for low temperature growth and metabolism is Planococcus halocryophilus (P. halocryophilus), which can replicate at -15°C, while maintaining metabolic activity down to -25°C. The mechanisms which facilitate this low temperature activity are currently unknown.

Research project

This RSE Grant will enable Dr Gault to investigate whether it is the onset of intracellular vitrification that enforces a limit for P. halocryophilus’ low temperature activity and whether P. halocryophilus has adaptations which can modulate its intracellular vitrification.

In addition, he will be exploring whether the presence of extracellular ions found in the natural environment and the growth medium confer any depression of P. halocryophilus’ intracellular vitrification, thereby permitting low temperature metabolic activity without the need for specific vitrification oriented adaptions.

Congratulations to Dr Beckmann who has received a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF).

Supermassive black holes

Dr Beckmann’s research focuses on supermassive black holes, which are some of the most extreme objects in the Universe. Today, every massive galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its centre. With each black hole weighing more than a small galaxy, such massive objects cannot form directly. Instead, today's supermassive black holes started out as small black holes when the Universe was young, over 12 billion years ago.

Her fellowship success will enable her to use powerful simulations to tackle the difficult challenge of how black holes in the early Universe move in and around galaxies. Dr Beckmann’s work will unveil when and how they first find their way into the galaxies where we can see them today, and quantify what impact they had on the early Universe. As part of this work she will take advantage of the recent wealth of insight from the James Webb Space telescope, and prepare for upcoming flagship missions such as the gravitational wave observatory LISA and the X-ray observatory NewATHENA.

Dr Beckmann originally joined the School of Physics and Astronomy in 2024 as an Elizabeth Gardner fellow. 

UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship

The UKRI FLF scheme supports universities, businesses, and other research and innovation environments to develop their most talented people into a next wave of world-class leaders.

The scheme provides long-term support in order to enable fellows to tackle ambitious programmes, multidisciplinary questions, and new or emerging research and innovation areas and partnerships.

In this latest round, 68 fellows will be funded a total of £104 million to lead research into global issues and commercialise their innovations in the UK.

Astronomers have created the most detailed weather report so far for two distant worlds beyond our own solar system.

The international study – the first of its kind – reveals the extreme atmospheric conditions on the celestial objects, which are swathed in swirling clouds of hot sand amid temperatures of 950C.

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers set out to capture the weather on a pair of brown dwarfs – cosmic bodies that are bigger than planets but smaller than stars. These brown dwarfs, named collectively as WISE 1049AB, are the brightest and closest objects of their type to Earth, around six light years away.

The team tracked each brown dwarf’s atmosphere by measuring the light waves emitted from their surfaces, which change as more or less cloudy regions revolve in and out of view. By visualising this data through light curves – a plot of how the brightness of light from each object changes over time – the team was able to build up a detailed 3D picture of how the brown dwarfs’ weather changed over the course of a full rotation or day, between five and seven hours. The team was also able to plot how the light from each object varied by wavelength, to demonstrate the presence and complex interplay of gases such as water, methane, and carbon monoxide in their atmospheres. The insights may help astronomers develop the understanding of brown dwarfs as a potential missing link between stars and planets – promising new insights into both.

By observing the infrared part of the light spectrum, the JWST is able to observe wavelengths of light that are blocked by our own atmosphere. This capability opens frontiers in the study of the early universe, star formation, and so-called exoplanets such as brown dwarfs which lie beyond our solar system.

The latest study builds on previous studies of brown dwarfs, which have mainly been confined to capturing static snapshots of their atmosphere on only one side. This approach is limited, as brown dwarfs are known to rotate relatively quickly and their weather can vary greatly over time, researchers say. 

Their findings will pave the way for more detailed studies into brown dwarfs and other distant celestial objects.

The study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with researchers from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Virginia, and other institutes from around the world.

Professor Beth Biller said

Our findings show that we are on the cusp of transforming our understanding of worlds far beyond our own.  Insights such as these can help us understand the conditions not just on celestial objects like brown dwarfs, but also on giant exoplanets beyond our solar system.  Eventually, the techniques we are refining here may enable the first detections of weather on habitable planets like our own, which orbit other stars.

Congratulations to Dr Barter who has been elected as LHCb-UK Physics Coordinator.

Dr William Barter has been elected as LHCb-UK Physics Coordinator for the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment.

The LHCb experiment is one of four large experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, investigating the physics of particles that contain either beauty quarks or charm quarks, searching for signs of new fundamental particles and forces of nature. The experiment has been running successfully for over a decade and has now entered a new era following a recent upgrade. This upgrade will collect significantly larger datasets, unlocking the potential for exciting new discoveries in the coming years.

The UK physics coordinator is responsible for coordinating the studies of over 200 scientists at the 11 UK institutes within the international collaboration that operates the LHCb detector. The holder of the role is chosen by these UK institutes in a nationally competitive election process. Following his election, Dr Barter will carry out this role for the next two years, leading the UK community within LHCb in an exciting and crucial period.

Congratulations to Dr Erin Goldstraw who has been awarded a Daphne Jackson fellowship.

Dr Erin Goldstraw will take up her appointment with the School of Mathematics with joint supervision from the School of Physics and Astronomy.

She completed her MSc in Mathematical Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy in 2014/15, graduating with Distinction and receiving a class medal.

Dr Erin Goldstraw’s research project aims to combine current knowledge between plasma turbulence, solar physics and fusion research in a way that is understandable and useful for all of these fields.

Daphne Jackson Fellowships enable talented scientists and researchers to retrain and return to research after a break of two or more years.

The Daphne Jackson Trust was established in 1992 in memory of Professor Daphne Jackson – the UK’s first female Professor of Physics.  Daphne devised a Fellowship scheme in the mid-1980s to support talented individuals wanting to return to research after a career break.

Professor Murray Campbell’s community service has been recognised with the award of the British Empire Medal.

Professor Donald Murray Campbell, Professor of Musical Acoustics, has been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to the Carlops Church and to the local community in Tweeddale and Edinburgh.

Professor Campbell has for several decades served Carlops Church in the voluntary roles of Session Clerk and organist. He is also a member of the Worship Leaders Team in the linked charge of West Tweeddale, and is currently Convener of the Lothian and Borders Presbytery Council. He and his wife Patsy are well known for their demonstration lectures to schools and community groups on the science and history of musical instruments.

The King’s Birthday Honours are announced each year to mark extraordinary contributions and achievements of people across the United Kingdom, including exceptional service to the UK overseas or internationally.