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Last year, astronomers were excited to discover that the number of exoplanets increases toward smaller sizes, suggesting that there are many Earth-size planets in the galaxy. A new analysis of three years of Kepler data shows that this increase plateaus around twice Earth size. Nevertheless, Earth-like planets occur around at least 17 percent of sun-like stars.
Tag: astronomy
Intelligent civilizations rarer than one in a million
February 8, 2013:
After looking for intelligent radio signals from 86 stars with known planets, UC Berkeley scientists have, for the first time, calculated the odds of finding intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. Fewer than one in a million stars probably are advanced enough for us to detect, though that means there are still potentially millions of such civilizations in the galaxy.
Planet makes weird loops around dusty star
January 12, 2013:
UC Berkeley astronomer Paul Kalas has studied the star Fomalhaut for years because of its resemblance to our own solar system 4 billion years ago. New observations using the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that an already-known planet circling Fomalhaut has a highly eccentric orbit that suggests the presence of other planets.
Farthest supernova yet for measuring cosmic history
January 9, 2013:
The Supernova Cosmology Project, based at Berkeley Lab and headed by UC Berkeley physicist and Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter, has discovered the most distant supernova yet that can be used in cosmological studies. Announced at the American Astronomical Society meeting, it will help answer questions about dark energy and the fate of the universe.
Exocomets may be as common as exoplanets
January 7, 2013:
Astronomers have found thousands of potential exoplanets and many stars with massive disks of gas and dust that suggest planets are forming, but not much of the stuff intermediate between dust and planets, such as asteroids, planetesimals and comets. UC Berkeley astronomer Barry Welsh has looked closely at a number of stars with dust disks and found evidence that they also have comets.
Moore Foundation grant to boost search for dark energy
December 5, 2012:
A $2.1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics will fund revolutionary technologies that the proposed BigBOSS project will use to study dark energy with unprecedented precision. BigBOSS, based at Berkeley Lab, will probe the expansion history of the universe, says BCCP director Uros Seljak. professor of physics.
Robert Lin, UC Berkeley pioneer in experimental space physics, dies at 70
November 21, 2012:
Physicist Robert Peichung Lin, a former director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, who designed and built dozens of instruments to study solar flares, the magnetic fields on the surface of the moon and Mars and the plasma environment of Earth, died suddenly of a stroke on Saturday, Nov. 17.
Keck observations reveal complex face of Uranus
October 17, 2012:
Uranus is so far from Earth that telescopes have typically seen little more than a blue-green blur, but new techniques employed with the Keck II telescope in Hawaii are revealing complex surface detail reminiscent of the solar system’s other giant planets, including Saturn and Neptune.
Grants help scientists explore boundary between science & science fiction
October 5, 2012:
Astronomer Geoff Marcy and cosmologist and string theorist Raphael Bousso are among 20 scientists awarded research grants to explore innovative and edgy areas of science. In the case of Marcy and Bousso, these areas are on the border between science and science fiction.
Nobel Laureate Adam Riess to discuss mystery of dark energy
October 2, 2012:
Nobel Laureate and alumnus Adam G. Riess will give a free public talk at UC Berkeley about groundbreaking research on the expansion of the universe and its implications for dark energy.
David Wake and two other Berkeley faculty honored by California Academy
September 28, 2012:
David Wake, amphibian expert and professor emeritus of integrative biology, will receive this year’s Fellows’ Medal, the highest honor of the California Academy of Sciences. Wildlife ecologist Justin Brashares, associate professor of ESPM, and astronomer Steven Beckwith are among 10 newly elected fellows of the academy.
Bernard Sadoulet shares Panofsky Prize for dark matter search
September 27, 2012:
The 2013 Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics was awarded jointly to UC Berkeley physicist Bernard Sadoulet and Stanford’s Blas Cabrera for their development of new techniques for searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS), the most popular candidate for the unseen dark matter that permeates the universe.
Berkeley astronomers featured tonight in KQED Quest program’Black Holes’
September 26, 2012:
UC Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko joins William Craig and other NuSTAR satellite scientists tonight on the KQED Quest program “Black Holes: Objects of Attraction,” airing locally at 7:30 p.m. Filippenko explains the physics of black holes, while Craig and NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison of Caltech explain how the x-ray satellite will help solve black hole mysteries.
Explosion of galaxy formation lit up early universe
September 4, 2012:
The universe was dark until the first stars began to form, but the universe really lit up once massive hydrogen clouds began birthing galaxies of stars. A new study by postdocs Oliver Zahn and Christian Reichardt, using data from the South Pole Telescope, finds that this period, called the Epoch of Reionization, was later and more explosive than thought.
Quick response helps ID star system preceding supernova
August 23, 2012:
When UC Berkeley astronomers Alex Filippenko and Joshua Bloom heard about a newly exploded star, they swiveled the Keck Telescope into position to take a picture. This data helped Berkeley Lab’s Peter Nugent determine that the “progenitor” star had a companion red giant and had undergone more than one previous nova explosion before it went supernova.
CINEMA among tiny CubeSats to be launched Aug. 2
July 31, 2012:
CINEMA, a tiny nanosatellite designed and built by students at UC Berkeley, is scheduled for launch on Aug. 2. Once in Earth orbit, it will monitor the movement of charged particles in the atmosphere that can disrupt power grids on the ground.
Theoretical astrophysicist receives $500,000+, no strings attached
July 24, 2012:
The Simons Foundation of New York initiated a new program of Simons Investigators this year, awarding 21 mathematicians, theoretical physicists and theoretical computer scientists $100,000 per year for 5-10 years, no strings attached. Theoretical astrophysicist Eliot Quataert was one of them.
X-ray telescope to focus on hottest regions of black holes, supernovas
June 8, 2012:
NASA is scheduled to launch an orbiting X-ray satellite on Wednesday, June 13, that will open a new window on the universe, allowing scientists to probe the roiling edges of black holes, exploding stars and the smallest, most frequent flares on the sun. UC Berkeley scientists and engineers helped build the instruments, will operate the satellite, and will analyze the data from supernova explosions.
Black dot on the sun’s a bright spot for campus stargazers
June 6, 2012:
A rare transit of Venus brought campus astronomers, and many others’ inner astronomers, out of doors Tuesday. On Sproul Plaza, hundreds lined up, over the course of five hours, for a last-in-a-lifetime chance to glimpse Venus by day; others viewed the planet from as near as Lawrence Hall of Science or as far away as Hawaii.
UC Berkeley junior hot on the trail of Sutter’s Mill meteorites
May 17, 2012:
When a fireball exploded over California’s Gold Country on April 22, Cal geology major Jason Utas wrapped up his final exam and headed to Sutter’s Mill with a dozen of his friends to look for fragments. Four of them, including Utas, found small pieces of a rare carbonaceous chondrite, a type of meteorite that may have carried the building blocks of life to Earth billions of years ago.
Campbell Hall bites the dust, clearing space for LEED-certified replacement
May 10, 2012:
Demolition crews began tearing down the 53-year-old Campbell Hall Thursday to make way for a new, 82,000-square-foot LEED-certified facility for astronomy and physics.
Four UC Berkeley scientists elected to National Academy of Sciences
May 1, 2012:
Four University of California, Berkeley, faculty members – physicists John Clarke and Bernard Sadoulet, chemist John Hartwig and ecologist Mary Power – have been elected members or foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences, bringing UC Berkeley’s total NAS membership to 141.
Space Sciences Lab learns more about colorful auroras
April 17, 2012:
Using high resolution satellite imagery, scientists at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory are learning more about how the aurora borealis, or the “Northern Lights,” move across the sky. SSL physicist Chris Chaston tells Inside Science TV that, because of increasing activity on the sun, next year the colorful light show may be visible as far south as Minnesota.
UC Berkeley passes management of Allen Telescope Array to SRI
April 13, 2012:
After operating the Hat Creek Radio Observatory for more than 50 years, and most recently partnering with the SETI Institute to build the Allen Telescope Array, UC Berkeley is handing over management to SRI International, which will operate the observatory for the U.S. Air Force. The telescope will track space debris and continue to search for signs of intelligent civilizations.
South Pole Telescope yields new insights on dark energy
April 2, 2012:
Preliminary data from the South Pole Telescope show that Einstein was probably right about the cosmological constant, which some believe can explain dark energy. UC Berkeley astrophysicists William Holzapfel & Adrian Lee, with postdoc Christian Reichardt & others, designed and built the receiver for the telescope, which explores questions of dark energy, dark matter and neutrinos.
A precision map of galaxies at dawn of dark energy era
March 30, 2012:
The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has made the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on some 6 billion years ago. The precision measurements – the best of any galaxy survey, according to UC Berkeley astronomer Martin White – will allow exploration of the enigmatic nature of dark energy.
Grad student demonstrates long-predicted effect on cosmic background radiation
March 20, 2012:
Nick Hand, a graduate student in astronomy, has confirmed a subtle effect on the cosmic microwave background radiation that was predicted 40 years ago. While an undergraduate at Princeton, Hand combined new survey data of distant galaxies to show that the temperature of the background radiation – a remnant of the Big Bang – is shifted when it passes through a galaxy cluster.
Physicist Hitoshi Murayama to direct new Kavli institute at Univ. of Tokyo
February 8, 2012:
The Kavli Foundation endowed a new Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo to be directed by theoretical physicist Hitoshi Murayama. While maintaining his position as UC Berkeley professor of physics, Murayama will guide institute research into cosmological questions such as how the universe began, how it will end and what laws govern it.
Astronomer Geoff Marcy appointed to Alberts Chair in SETI
December 23, 2011:
UC Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy has been appointed the Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The Alberts have long held an interest in SETI-related research, and created the chair in 1998 as the first-ever endowed chair to support SETI.
Berkeley 2011 — the year in pictures
December 22, 2011:
Beyond the protests, the story — as always — is one of engagement, passion and perseverance in the face of challenges, whether institutional or personal.
