Scottish astronomers are pre-eminent in their field, according to analysis of published scientific research.
Read the full story in Times Higher Education.
Pooling expertise
The statistics highlight the expertise of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), a pooling arrangement which includes researchers from the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Strathclyde, West of Scotland, and Heriot-Watt University.
SUPA has benefited from recruitment of world-class staff and through collaboration.
Leading technology
Scottish success in astronomy has been made possible by developments such as the SCUBA submillimetre camera, which rivals the Hubble telescope in terms of its impact on astronomy.
The device has helped scientists obtain heat-generated images of early galaxies, and shed light on the formation of our solar system.
Scottish astronomers are proud to be leading the world in terms of research quality. With investment from SUPA, we expect to continue our success in working on the biggest challenges in modern astronomy, such as extrasolar planets or the nature of dark energy in cosmology.
Head of the Institute for Astronomy
Physicists from Edinburgh are to join the quest for the Higgs boson particle at CERN in Switzerland.
The researchers will join the international ATLAS collaboration seeking to verify the existence of the theoretical sub-atomic particle, a crucial part of the Standard Model of Particle Physics and Cosmology.
The ATLAS experiment aims to address the most important unsolved questions in the universe, i.e., whether or not, the Higgs boson exists, and what the fundamental particle mass generation mechanism is. It could also discover the origin of dark matter and new physics models of nature (e.g. super-symmetry).
Higgs theory
Emeritus Professor Peter Higgs predicted the existence of the Higgs particle while working at the University in the 1960s. If experiments at CERN’s massive atom-smasher prove the Professor’s theory correct, he is tipped to win the Nobel Prize for physics.
Joining the research at CERN are Dr Philip Clark, Dr Victoria Martin, Dr Andy Buckley, Dr Wahid Bhimji and Dr Andy Washbrook together with students Ben Wynne, Ben Smart and Brendan O’Brien and technician Andrew Main.
They will work on the ATLAS detector, one of four experiments analysising collisions at the Large Hadron Collider as it aims to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang.
Impact of research
Their work will involve modelling and simulating the particle collision process in order to understand the detector response and the complex data produced by the experiments. They will also contribute to the operation of the detector itself and provide software to manage the data produced.
Global partnership
Physicists from Edinburgh are already involved in another project at CERN (LHCb) but, until now, have not taken part directly in the search for the Higgs Boson.
The Edinburgh team joins the collaboration, involving 2900 people in 37 countries, after a year of preparatory work with support from colleagues in the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance.
Quote
This project represents the pinnacle of the UK’s ongoing research in particle physics, and is likely to dominate the field for the next 15 years. Our work could contribute to a paradigm shift in our current understanding of the physical universe.
Dr Philip Clark,
School of Physics and Astronomy
Peter Higgs, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, will this year give the Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture and will receive the Oskar Klein medal. Sponsored by the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and by Stockholm University, the lecture will take place in Stockholm on October 1 and honours the memory of Oskar Klein (1894-1977) who worked with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen before becoming a professor of theoretical physics at Stockholm University. The Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture was first held in 1988 and past speakers include Steven Weinberg, Hans Bethe, Martin Rees, and Stephen Hawking to name but a few.
A recent collaboration between musicians and scientists has resulted in the construction of a musical instrument, which may be the mysterious “lituus” written for by J. S. Bach. Bach’s funeral motet ‘O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht’ (BWV 118) is thought to have first been performed in 1736-7. Bach’s score calls for two “litui” along with other more common instruments.
Musicological research conducted at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis; Basel, Switzerland (http://www.scb-basel.ch [German language]) proposed that the “lituus” written for by Bach may have been a long wooden natural instrument, sounding somewhere between a trumpet and an alphorn, and playing a series of natural harmonics. An initial design of the bore profile was created from interpolated measurements of a natural trumpet and a straight büchel (a wooden alphorn-like instrument). The challenge faced by scientists at the Musical Acoustics Laboratory in Edinburgh (https://www.acoustics.ed.ac.uk) was to improve this initial design for the lituus and produce an instrument with the appropriate sound, pitch and timbre. This bore profile was optimised in Edinburgh using specialist software developed by Dr Alistair Braden during his PhD at the University of Edinburgh.
Providing an integrated software package which allows for the design, testing, and optimisation of brass instruments, the Brass Instrument Evolution Software (BIES) models the behaviour of multi-modal acoustical pressure waves within a given instrument bore profile. The software was used to set target input impedance peaks for the lituus, modelled computationally, which then produced a design for the instrument that would play in tune. Two litui were built from the optimised design and were played in a concert at the Schola in Basel and subsequently here in Edinburgh. The sound produced by the instruments is very similar to how researchers believed they may have originally sounded; sounding neither like a trumpet, nor an alphorn, but a combination of the two.
The School of Physics and Astronomy podcasts have been featured by Apple in the 'Noteworthy' section of iTunesU this week.
iTunesU is becoming an increasingly popular provider of educational content in the HE/FE sectors in the UK and US. The school currently runs two podcast channels for its Physics General Interest Seminars (Alex Murphy and Iain Robinson) and Musical Acoustics course (Clive Greated) and this promotion on iTunesU represents a new way for people to be aware of the school's activities. The University of Edinburgh recently launched its iTunesU presence with over 100 video and audio podcasts.
iTunesU can be accessed through the iTunes application on Windows and Mac by going to the iTunes Store and clicking 'iTunesU' - or follow the web links below. iTunesU can also be accessed on iPhone. For those without iTunes, the podcasts can be accessed directly via https://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/podcasts.
Update: Apple have since changed the Noteworthy section and the link to the school's podcasts is no longer present.
The British Science Festival is Europe's largest celebration of science, technology and engineering (Guildford, 5-10 September 2009). Each year there are five special Award Lectures giving a rare opportunity to honour professional scientists or engineers in the early stages of their career, who show outstanding skills in communication to a non-specialist audience. This year, the Lord Kelvin Award Lecture for the Physical Sciences and Mathematics will be 'Exploring the Dark Side of the Universe', presented by Dr Alex Murphy of the School's Nuclear Physics group. This fully interactive event will visit a laboratory deep underground in which the search for the missing dark matter of the Universe is being conducted."
The UK's Institute of Physics (IoP) has announced that the Dirac Medal for 2009 has been won by Prof Mike Cates.
The UK's Institute of Physics (IoP) has announced that the Dirac Medal for 2009 has been won by Prof Mike Cates, 'for pioneering work in the theoretical physics of soft materials, particularly in relation to their flow behaviour'. The Dirac medal, which marks outstanding contributions to theoretical physics, is one of four gold medals awarded annually by the IoP. The formal presentation will be made in London in October. Remarkably, this is the second major award this year for Mike, who in April received a gold medal from the British Society of Rheology.
Dr Chamkaur Ghag, a postdoctoral research assistant in the Nuclear Physics Group, has won this year's Institute of Physics Astroparticle Physics Group prize.
This national early career prize is awarded on the basis of three refereed journal papers published in the last three years. It recognises his outstanding contributions to the ZEPLIN and DRIFT collaboration searches for dark matter that are taking place in the Boulby Mine, as well as other contributions to scientific research.
Edinburgh Nuclear Physicists working at US and European accelerators report key nuclear astrophysical reaction measurements affecting cosmic γ-ray emission line intensities, in 2 papers in same issue of prestigious Physical Review Letters journal.
Modern satellite telescopes are revealing detailed information on cosmic γ-ray emission. Distinctive γ-ray lines, associated with the radioactive decays of specific nuclear isotopes in our galaxy, are tracers that tell us that the process of production of elements, known as nucleosynthesis, is ongoing in the cosmic environment, and in our own galaxy. There remain key uncertainties as to the origins of these radio-isotopes due to orders of magnitude uncertainties in the nuclear reaction rates at the burning temperatures in stars. These reactions only take place at very low energies by quantum tunnelling, and the reactions can be ignited by the existence of single resonances located in the burning energy region known as the Gamow window.
The Edinburgh Nuclear Physics Group is internationally renowned for its work on explosive nuclear astrophysical reactions, and in particular on its links with the properties of unstable (sometimes known as exotic) nuclei. In an experimental work led by Gavin Lotay, as part of his PhD Thesis work, and Professor Woods, performed at Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, USA the world leading Gammasphere array was used to identify key low lying resonances for the first time, thereby reducing uncertainties in the nuclear reaction rates affecting production of the cosmic γ-ray emitter 26Al by nearly a factor of a million! These results clearly demonstrate that low energy reactions on massive Wolf-Rayet stars, and the subsequent flow of material into the cosmos from stellar winds, is the most likely source of the majority of the 26Al material observed in satellite missions. This was reported in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters [1], the image shows Gavin Lotay and a Wolf-Rayet star in the background.
In the same Physical Review Letters issue Professor Woods, Dr Aliotta, and Dr Davinson, as part of an international team reported the observation of a broad astrophysical resonance that had been predicted by nuclear theoreticians, but whose absence had been something of a mystery. This resonance was observed using accelerated radioactive beams, a vital modern approach that allows us to study for the first time key nuclear reactions that take place in the Universe in hot, dense, exploding stars such as novae, but reproduced here on the surface of the earth [2]. This result increases the destruction rate of the radioisotope 18F, in novae burning, and may explain the surprising failure of satellite missions to observe its presence through cosmic γ-ray emission.
References
- [1] G. J. Lotay, P.J. Woods et al., Physical Review Letters, 102, 162502 (2009)
- [2] J.C. Dalouzy et al., Physical Review Letters, 102, 162503 (2009).
Professor Mike Cates has received the British Society of Rheology Gold Medal 'in recognition of his contribution to the theoretical rheology of complex micellar and particulate fluids'.
At the recent Annual European Rheology Conference in Cardiff, Mike Cates received the British Society of Rheology (BSR) Gold Medal 'in recognition of his contribution to the theoretical rheology of complex micellar and particulate fluids'.
The Gold Medal is the BSR's premier award: since it was founded in 1966, only 15 have been awarded. Recipients are all judged to have made outstanding fundamental contributions to rheology that have stood the test of time. Recognising the honour of hosting the European Rheology Conference, the BSR have decided to award two gold medals in 2009 ‒ one went to Mike, and the other to Tom McLeish (Leeds until recently, now at Durham).