An expert in quantum precision measurements, Nancy Aggarwal creates technologies to detect the universe’s unseen phenomena. In her lab, she’s developing two major experimental platforms: a first-of-its-kind gravitational-wave observatory and precision measurement systems for next-generation dark matter searches.
While almost the complete inverse of astronomy and cosmology, fields concerned with the largest objects in our universe, particle physics aims to answer similar questions but from a different vantage. Matthew Citron discusses how particle physicists like himself use particle accelerators to search for dark matter.
The newest results from LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) extend the experiment’s search for low-mass dark matter and set world-leading limits on one of the prime dark matter candidates: weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. They also mark the first time LZ has picked up signals from neutrinos from the sun, a milestone in sensitivity.
Nobel Laureate Adam Riess recently visited the UC Davis campus to tell the story of the surprising expansion history of the universe. It’s a story Riess played a pivotal role in revealing. In 2011, he was one of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae.”
Using a global network of telescopes, astronomers have detected the lowest-mass dark object yet found in the universe. The work is described in two papers published Oct. 9 in Nature Astronomy and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The results of two decades of scientific and technological innovation were unveiled today with the reveal of the first imagery captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a facility jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
Tony Tyson, a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, recounts the origin of the Rubin Observatory and his decades-long journey to make the facility a reality.
In a paper published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, researchers propose a way to potentially test the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe was tuned to support the evolution of intelligent life.
New results from the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector, LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), have narrowed down possibilities for one of the leading dark matter candidates: weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.
Coming online in 2025, the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's enormous, unrelenting eye on the sky will create the biggest, most data-rich movie ever made — a 10-year, high-precision chronicle of trillions of cosmic events and objects across space and time.
