Astronomy & Astrophysics
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New Research Shows How AI Could Transform Math, Physics, Cancer Research and More
“I had not seen anything that impressive [in math] from an LLM before,” says Ryan Foley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. “I suspect LLMs are going to upend how theories are created, vetted and improved.”
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UCSC astronomy Ph.D. survived war and helped build Kosovo’s first observatory. Now she’s bringing the cosmos to Bay Area classrooms
After surviving the Kosovo War and witnessing her first solar eclipse as a child, UC Santa Cruz astronomy Ph.D. student Pranvera Hyseni turned a moment of wonder into a lifelong mission to bring astronomy education to her homeland.
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Volcano Worlds Might Be the First Exomoons Found by Astronomers
Co-author on the new study, postdoctoral researcher Athira Unni of the University of California, Santa Cruz, released measurements of the movement of sodium around WASP-49b, citing the rapid velocity around the system as a clue toward the origin being a volcanic satellite rather than stellar eruptions or other astrophysical sources.
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An Earthling’s guide to planet hunting
Earth’s turbulent atmosphere makes it hard to detect new planets from the ground. UC Santa Cruz astronomer Rebecca Jensen-Clem is working out how to find them anyway.
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An interstellar object is passing through our solar system. This UC program says to stay calm and carry on
One of those scientists who you can shadow is Raja GuhaThakurta, faculty director of UC Santa Cruz’s department of Creating Equity in STEAM. For GuhaThakurta, who started the Shadow the Scientists program in 2020, the hysteria around the alien spaceship — or artifact — theory is not only misguided. “This kind of sensationalism ends up ultimately… causing…
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Brightest fast radio burst ever detected could help solve an enduring cosmic mystery
Prior to the Outrigger telescopes’ capability to triangulate a fast radio burst to its source, “it was like talking to someone on the phone and not knowing what city or state they were calling from,” said study coauthor Bryan Gaensler, dean of the University of California, Santa Cruz science division. Also covered by Gizmodo.
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Steam Worlds Have Atmospheres Like a Sweltering Sauna, Made Entirely of Hot Water Vapor
“The interiors of planets are natural ‘laboratories’ for studying conditions that are difficult to reproduce in a university laboratory on Earth. What we learn could have unforeseen applications we haven’t even considered. The water worlds are especially exotic in this sense,” said co-author Natalie Batalha, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of…
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Astronomers discover strange solar system body dancing in sync with Neptune: ‘Like finding a hidden rhythm in a song’
“This new motion is like finding a hidden rhythm in a song we thought we knew,” team member and University of California, Santa Cruz scientist Ruth Murray-Clay said. “It could change how we think about the way distant objects move.” Additional coverage in IFL Science.
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Astronomers discover a pulsar and a helium star orbiting each other
“There’s a physical law that if a binary system loses more than half its mass, the system will become unbound,” says Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study. When the more massive star exploded and became a neutron star, Ramirez-Ruiz…
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Vera Rubin Scientists Reveal Telescope’s First Images
“You’ve not seen the whole thing, all captured at once at this depth with so many objects there,” said Steven Ritz, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the project scientist for Rubin construction. “That, I would point out, is new. And just how pretty it is.” Additional coverage by the BBC,…
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‘Science is a human endeavor’: astrophysicist uses art to connect Black and brown kids to the STEM fields
So begins a chapter about our closest star in Painting the Cosmos, a recent book by UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist Dr. Nia Imara. The book blends science and art in an ode to the diversity of the cosmos. While touching on astronomical tidbits, such as the fact that scientists measure the rate of the sun’s…
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Ghostly galaxy without dark matter baffles astronomers
A team, led by astronomer Yimeng Tang at the University of California, Santa Cruz, compared FCC 224’s properties to other galaxies that seemingly lack dark matter, focusing on two ghostly objects within the NGC 1052 group about 65 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus. Tang and his colleagues propose that FCC 224, like those…