News

Congratulations to Maya Fishbach for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "Astrophysics and Cosmology with Gravitational Waves" (PhD Advisor: Daniel E. Holz).

Congratulations to Prof. Paolo Privitera

Fermilab, UChicago scientists tap South Pole Telescope data to shed light on universe

A team of scientists have demonstrated how to "weigh" galaxy clusters using light from the earliest moments of the universe - a new method that could help shed light on dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the cosmos, such as how the universe formed.

A new solar telescope in Hawaii has captured images of the sun unlike any seen before.  Professor Robert Rosner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and one of the lead investigators on the project, says he’s been waiting for almost 40 years to see images like the ones recently captured.

"The most exciting thing is always something you haven't anticipated. In astronomy, whenever we've invented a new way to look at the sky, we discover something new that no one had ever thought of before. Our gravitational wave detectors haven't discovered anything profoundly unexpected, at least not yet."
- Daniel Holz, astrophysicist

Phil Mansfield has been appoined as  the James Cronin Graduate Student Fellow.

Citation: "For central contribution to the first measurement of Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering."

The Department of Energy has awarded Fermilab and University of Chicago scientist Josh Frieman $1 million over three years as part of the inaugural Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellowship program.

UChicago-led proposal receives NSF funding for pioneering sky measurements

The National Science Foundation has awarded $4 million to the University of Chicago to host the development of an ambitious multi-institutional program to map the leftover light from the Big Bang in greater detail than ever before.

Called CMB-S4, the groundbreaking project will allow us to see back in time to the earliest epoch of the universe. Remnant light from this period, called the cosmic microwave background, is still visible in the skies and holds clues to many of the most pressing mysteries about the universe - from its earliest moments to how it evolved to produce the wondrous structure of galaxies, stars and planets that we see today.

"The history of the universe-and the physics that govern its evolution - are encoded in the cosmic microwave background, and rigorous, precise measurements will allows us to unlock this information and will likely lead to new discoveries," said renowned UChicago cosmologist John Carlstrom, principal investigator for this initial phase of the project and co-spokesperson of the CMB-S4 collaboration, who also holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. "These are big, big topics in physics, many of which we don't know how to get at any other way."

Congratulations to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration for being awarded the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The citation reads: "For the first image of a supermassive black hole, taken by means of an Earth-sized alliance of telescopes.”  The $3 million prize will be shared equally among the 347 co-authors.

Several UChicago researchers are involved in the EHT collaboration, and the 10 meter South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a critical component of the network of telescopes that make up the EHT.   Chicagoland EHT collaboration members include Brad Benson, John Carlstrom, Tom Crawford, Jason Henning, Ryan Keisler, Erik Leitch, Daniel Michalik, Andrew Nadolski, Steve Padin, and Sasha Rahlin.
 

In a forthcoming paper, UChicago scientists announce a new measurement of the universe’s expansion that uses red giant stars. 

NASA Press Release

Commentary in Science Magazine

Scientists measure half-life of element that’s longer than the age of the universe

Astronomers Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

Fermilab part of unprecedented effort to learn more about expansion of universe

UChicago study: New LIGO readings could improve disputed measurement within 5-10 years