Tag: University of Washington
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Asteroid Institute’s first fellows come with credentials that are out of this world
The Asteroid Detection Analysis and Mapping software, or ADAM, can plot the courses of multiple asteroids and other celestial bodies, as shown in this visualization. (B612 Asteroid Institute via YouTube) A Silicon Valley institute focusing on the perils and prospects posed by near-Earth objects has chosen its first senior research fellows to work at the…
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How number crunchers could help crack the cosmological mystery of dark energy
Berkeley astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter discusses the implications of the universe’s accelerating expansion at the University of Washington. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) Big data just might give astronomers a better grip on the answer to one of the biggest questions in physics: Exactly what’s behind the mysterious acceleration in the expansion rate of the universe,…
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SETI Institute gives Drake Award to Univ. of Washington astrobiologist Vikki Meadows
University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows holds up a rock sample. (UW Photo) University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows has become the first woman to receive the SETI Institute’s Frank Drake Award, named after a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Meadows directs UW’s graduate program in astrobiology and is the principal investigator for…
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Scientists fine-tune the formula for finding the signature of life in alien atmospheres
An artist’s conception shows the light of an alien star shining through a planet’s atmosphere. (NASA Goddard via YouTube) Is the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere of an alien world the only sure-fire sign that life is present? Not necessarily: Scientists say the chemical signature of biological activity is likely to be more subtle,…
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Andromeda Galaxy gets photobombed by a couple of monster black holes farther out
A combination of X-ray and optical imagery shows the black hole pair known as J0045+41 glowing amid the much closer stars of the Andromeda Galaxy. (X-ray: NASA / CXC / UW / Dorn-Wallenstein et al. Optical: NASA / ESA / J. Dalcanton et al. and R. Gendler) It turns out that even galaxies can be…
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Super-wide-angle Zwicky Transient Facility celebrates ‘first light’ with help from UW
The Zwicky Transient Facility captured this “first light” image on Nov. 1. The Orion Nebula is at lower right. Computers searching these images for quick-changing events are trained to recognize and ignore non-astronomical artifacts such as the vertical lines seen here. (Caltech Optical Observatories) A sky survey that draws upon the data-crunching skills of researchers…
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Why these scientists argue that we are turning Earth into an alien planet
Imagery from the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership satellite shows Earth’s lights at night. In a newly published study, researchers argue that planets could be classified based on the effects of energy on the environment. (NASA Photo / Joshua Stevens / Miguel Roman) A trio of scientists has just laid out a new classification scheme…
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UW researchers’ ‘kidney on a chip’ will be prepped for space station experiment
The “kidney on a chip” is about the size of a credit card. (UW Photo / Alex Levine) A stack of card-sized gizmos that test the effects of drugs, toxins and weightlessness on human kidney cells is due to take a ride to the International Space Station as early as next year – and researchers…
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UW’s DIRAC Institute gears up for big data from wide-angle telescope surveys
Artwork shows the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope scanning the night sky in Chile. (LSST Illustration) A new data analysis center for what’s expected to be torrents of astronomical imagery is taking shape at the University of Washington. Thanks to contributions from software billionaire Charles Simonyi and other donors, researchers at the Astronomy Department’s DIRAC Institute are…
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Astronomers use the music of the spheres to track TRAPPIST-1’s seventh planet
An artist’s conception shows the planet TRAPPIST-1h. (NASA / JPL-Caltech) An international research team led by a University of Washington astronomer has worked out the intricate dance of seven planets circling an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, nailing down the coordinates of the outermost world in the process. The astronomers found that all seven…