Physical Sciences

Gerald Mahan honored with 2015 International Thermoelectric Society Outstanding Achievement in Thermoelectrics Award
Gerald Mahan
Quantum computing advance locates neutral atoms
Neutral atom qubits don't take up much space and they don't interact with each other unless they are told to. Credit: iStock Photo monsitj
NSF funds Industry/University Center for Atomically Thin Coatings
Image of an atomically thin coating. Image: M. Breshnehan
New Milky Way Map Reveals Stars in Our Galaxy Move Far from Home
A single frame from an animation shows how stellar orbits in the Milky Way can change. It shows two pairs of stars (marked as red and blue) in which each pair started in the same orbit, and then one star in the pair changed orbits. The star marked as red has completed its move into a new orbit, while the star marked in blue is still moving. Credit: Dana Berry / SkyWorks Digital, Inc.; SDSS collaboration
Clump of a star's gas, catapulting into space at 40 million miles per hour, appears to be picking up speed
This artist's drawing and trio of X-ray images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory illustrate that a clump of stellar material has been jettisoned away from a double-star system at incredibly high speeds. Credit:X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/G.Pavlov et al; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
2D materials researchers aim 'beyond graphene': In the realm of 2D materials, weirdness works
Each of these triangular pieces of material is a monolayer of tungsten disulfide. Under some conditions, as seen here, these monolayers emit red light. Image: The Terrones group, Penn State University
Jane Charlton selected as Penn State Teaching Fellow
Jane Charlton
Kin Fai Mak to receive Department of Energy Early Career Research Program funding
Kin Fai Mak
Charlton honored with President's Award for Excellence in Academic Integration
Jane Charlton
Black hole, quiet since 1989, now caught burping a rare X-ray flare
On June 15, NASA's Swift caught the onset of a rare X-ray outburst from a stellar-mass black hole in the binary system V404 Cygni. Astronomers around the world are watching the event. In this system, a stream of gas from a star much like the sun flows toward a 10 solar mass black hole. Instead of spiraling toward the black hole, the gas accumulates for decades in an accretion disk around it. Every couple of decades, the disk switches into a state that sends the gas rushing inward, starting a new outburst.
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