Physical Sciences

Scott Phillips receives Benkovic Early Career Professorship
NSF funds national user facility for $17.8 million to develop 2-D crystals
Artistic representation of growth and characterization of 2D materials -- tungsten disulfide on graphene Credit: Terrones Lab / Penn State
Phillips honored with Stephen and Patricia Benkovic Early Career Professorship
Scott Phillips
Ray Schaak selected to receive ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award
New trigger for self-powered mechanical movement
This image illustrates pumping in two directions at once with an enzyme patch. A patch of enzymes immobilized on a surface acts as a fluid pump. The fluid, and the small particles (green spheres) carried by the fluid, can simultaneously be pumped away from the patch (blue) in some parts of the chamber and toward the patch (red) in other locations. This behavior changes over time and is due to the changes in fluid density that the reaction produces. Credit: University of Pittsburgh
Mikael Rechtsman receives Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in physics
Mikael Rechtsman
New clues in the hunt for the sources of cosmic neutrinos
This illustration is an example of a hidden cosmic-ray accelerator. Cosmic rays are accelerated up to extremely high energies in dense environments close to black holes. High-energy gamma rays (marked by the “Y” gamma symbol) are blocked from escaping, while neutrinos (marked by the “V”nu symbol) easily escape and can reach the Earth. Credit: Bill Saxton at NRAO/AUI/NSF, modified by Kohta Murase at Penn State University
Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Einstein's Prediction: Opens New Window on the Universe with Observation of Gravitational Waves from Colliding Black Holes
Merging black holes ripple space and time in this artist's concept.  Image credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions
What Happens When LIGO Texts You to Say it's Detected One of Einstein's Predicted Gravitational Waves
These plots show the signals of gravitational waves detected by the twin LIGO observatories at Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The signals came from two merging black holes, each about 30 times the mass of our sun, lying 1.3 billion light-years away. LIGO, CC BY-ND
In Memoriam: Mercedes Richards (1955-2016)
Mercedes Richards, professor of astronomy and astrophysics
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