Georgia Tech’s Colleges of Engineering and Sciences have been chosen by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to hire a new faculty member focused on solar-terrestrial science and space weather research. The NSF is prioritizing a national need in geospace physics and selected Georgia Tech from a pool of national universities.
Author: gbieger3
Georgia Tech’s Space Research Initiative Hosts Yuri’s Day Symposium
April 12 is a significant date in the history of exploration, as it marks the first space flight of a human, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. This year on April 12, the Georgia Tech Space Research Initiative (Space RI) hosted an event highlighting the Institute’s interdisciplinary space research. The Yuri’s Day Symposium was Space RI’s first public event.
Four ECE Engineers, Three Receiver Sites, Two Days, and One Eclipse Expedition
While hundreds of Georgia Tech students gathered on Tech Green on April 8 to witness the first eclipse in the United States in close to a decade, three Ph.D. students in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) began preparing for the eclipse days before. Roderick Gray, Matthew Strong, and Varun Rajput, along with ECE research engineer Kevin Whitmore, traveled early Saturday morning to Houston, Texas.
M87* One Year Later: Proof of a Persistent Black Hole Shadow
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has released new images of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, using data from observations taken in April 2018.
With the participation of the newly commissioned Greenland Telescope and a dramatically improved recording rate across the array, the 2018 observations give researchers a view of the source independent from the first observations in 2017.
https://news.gatech.edu/news/2024/01/18/m87-one-year-later-proof-persistent-black-hole-shadow
Water on the Moon May Be Forming Due to Electrons From Earth
Scientists have discovered that electrons from Earth may be contributing to the formation of water on the Moon’s surface. The research, published in Nature Astronomy, has the potential to impact our understanding of how water — a critical resource for life and sustained future human missions to Earth’s moon — formed and continues to evolve on the lunar surface.
“Understanding how water is made on the Moon will help us understand how water was made in the early solar system and how water inevitably was brought to Earth,” says Thom Orlando, Regents’ Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with a joint appointment in the School of Physics, who played a critical role in the discovery alongside Brant Jones, a research scientist in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech.
https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/11/09/water-moon-may-be-forming-due-electrons-earth
Physicists Focus on Neutrinos With New Telescope
Georgia Tech scientists will soon have another way to search for neutrinos, those hard-to-detect, high-energy particles speeding through the cosmos that hold clues to massive particle accelerators in the universe — if researchers can find them.
“The detection of a neutrino source or even a single neutrino at the highest energies is like finding a holy grail,” says Professor Nepomuk Otte, the principal investigator for the Trinity Demonstrator telescope that was recently built by his group and collaborators, and was designed to detect neutrinos after they get stopped within the Earth.
https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/11/16/physicists-focus-neutrinos-new-telescope
Jim Sowell Talks About Watching Annular Eclipse
Jim Sowell, director of the Georgia Tech Observatory, will be keeping his eyes on the sky this weekend — and he says you should do the same.
An annular eclipse is set to take place Saturday, Oct. 14. It will cross North, Central, and South America with varying degrees of visibility.
“The entire country will see at least a partial eclipse,” Sowell said. “Go out and experience it and see it for yourself.”
https://news.gatech.edu/news/2023/10/12/jim-sowell-talks-about-watching-annular-eclipse