Scientists are bringing the search for life beyond the bounds of our blue, green planet right into UCLA’s backyard today. Schoenberg Music Hall will resonate with the voices of inquisitive community members as UCLA welcomes scientists from all over the country for the 16th annual Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of […]
Author Archives: Jennifer Lauren Lee
Changing the physics of philosophy
When Einstein introduced special relativity in 1905, physics did a summersault. But his revolutionary theory also changed the way philosophers since then have looked at some of the tensions raised by science, said Christopher Smeenk, an assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA whose specialty is the history and philosophy of science. “The theory certainly has […]
UCLA collaborates on dark matter
Invisible, foreign and reclusive, the dark matter that courses quietly through the universe may finally be within grasp. With the construction of a new detector for dark matter, UCLA scientists and their international collaborators are participating in the beginnings of a potential revolution in physics. The detection of this mysterious material may hold the key […]
Titan probe delivers atmospheric insight
Sprawled beneath a pale orange sky, the foreign wind rustling its recently discharged parachute, a solitary probe sent its first signal to expectant earthlings nearly a billion miles away. Last month, the Huygens probe landed with a “splat” on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, sending back the first physical data from the only moon in the […]
UCLA team finds evidence of massive black holes around Milky Way center
Twenty-six thousand light years away, at the center of our galaxy, a band of renegade black holes is congregating like a horde of bandits, flinging the hapless stars that cross its path into space, sending some directly into the maw of the massive black hole in the middle of the Milky Way, and possibly shaking […]
Tsunami was expected after large quake
The deadly wall of water that devastated the coastal communities of nearly a dozen countries in South Asia on Dec. 26 was the ocean’s natural response to the massive underwater earthquake, UCLA geophysicists say. “As far as I know, it behaved itself as it should have,” said John Vidale, professor of geophysics at UCLA. “The […]
UCLA professors develop stratospheric space observatory for infrared light
Three UCLA professors are leading the way to the development of a new space observatory that will fly around the country in the belly of a modified Boeing 747 airplane. As an observatory dedicated to investigating infrared light ““ light that is redder, or has longer wavelengths, than light which can be seen with the […]