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Tag: Department of Physics and Astronomy

UA Astronomer Helps Discover Elusive Black Hole

A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope view of galaxy 6dFGS gJ215022.2-055059 – the large white-yellow blob at the center of the image – and neighboring galaxies, combined with X-ray observations of a black hole at the galaxy’s outskirts – the small white-purple dot to its lower left – obtained with NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory.

From the August 2018 Desktop News | An astronomer at UA is part of an international team of researchers who found a mid-sized black hole, a cosmic oddity in observations of the universe. The finding, which demonstrates an effective method to detect this class of black holes, was announced recently in the journal Nature Astronomy. Two types of black holes are well-known. Massive stars create stellar-mass black holes when they die, while galaxies host supermassive black holes at their centers, with masses equivalent […]

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UA Book Helps Solve 87-Year-Old Fossil Mystery

From the March 2018 Desktop News | In the world of paleontology, mysteries abound. Apart from questions about their makers, fossils sometimes create their own mysteries after they are collected. The 2016 University of Alabama Press book, Footprints in Stone: Fossil Traces of Coal-Age Tetrapods, recently helped solve a mystery at the American Museum of Natural History, AMNH, in New York City. The book was co-written by Dr.  Ronald J. Buta, UA professor of astronomy, and Dr. David C. Kopaska-Merkel, section chief […]

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Solving Galactic Mysteries a Few Minutes at a Time

William Keel

  From the February 2018 Desktop News | A project led by an astronomer at The University of Alabama will use 12-25 minute gaps in the regular imaging schedule of the Hubble Space Telescope to get a better look at oddities found in the sky. Dr. William C. Keel, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, led an effort to use Hubble to investigate unusual objects found by volunteer astronomers in a crowd-sourced astronomy project, Galaxy Zoo, and its companion Radio Galaxy […]

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UA to Host Regional Science Olympiad

Tuscaloosa, Ala.—More than 600 students are expected to participate in the 2018 Regional Science Olympiad competition at The University of Alabama Saturday, Feb. 24, beginning at 8 a.m. Science Olympiad is an international non-profit organization founded in 1982 that promotes teamwork in disciplines of life science, earth and space science, physical science, chemistry, technology and engineering among elementary, middle and high-school students. The regional competition for middle and high-school students, hosted by UA, is just one of many to take […]

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A&S in the News: January 28-February 3, 2018

Mass Shootings America’s mass shooting epidemic: WDIV-NBC (Detroit, Michigan) – Jan. 28 On average, there’s a mass shooting almost every day here in the U.S. The statistics prompted folk at The University of Alabama to take an in depth look at the epidemic. 2017 was the deadliest year ever in modern history for mass shootings in America. 345 mass shootings almost one a day. To look at the horrific problem we sat down with The University of Alabama professor Adam Lankford. […]

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UA Scientist Helps Show How Earth Stops Tiny Particles in Their Tracks

From the January 2018 Desktop News | An international group of researchers, including several from The University of Alabama, measured the interaction between tiny particles, called neutrinos, that travel the cosmos and Earth. The findings, which carry implications for our understanding of physics and Earth’s core, were published in the journal Nature. Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles famous for passing through anything and everything, rarely interacting with matter. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second. Now, scientists have demonstrated […]

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