From The University of Manchester (UK): “Nanorippled graphene becomes a catalyst”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

3.14.23

Nanorippled graphene.

A team of researchers led by Prof. Andre Geim from the National Graphene Institute (NGI) have discovered that nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst, contrary to general expectations that the carbon sheet is as chemically inert as the bulk graphite from which it is obtained.

Published this week in the PNAS [below], the research has shown that graphene with nanoscale corrugations of its surface can accelerate hydrogen splitting as well as the best metallic-based catalysts. This unexpected effect is likely to be present in all two-dimensional materials, which are all inherently non-flat.

The Manchester team in collaboration with researchers from China and USA conducted a series of experiments to show that non-flatness of graphene makes it a strong catalyst. First, using ultrasensitive gas flow measurements and Raman spectroscopy, they demonstrated that graphene’s nanoscale corrugations were linked to its chemical reactivity with molecular hydrogen (H2) and that the activation energy for its dissociation into atomic hydrogen (H) was relatively small.

The team evaluated whether this reactivity is enough to make the material an efficient catalyst. To this end, the researchers used a mixture of hydrogen and deuterium (D2) gases and found that graphene indeed behaved as a powerful catalyst, converting H2 and D2 into HD. This was in stark contrast to the behaviour of graphite and other carbon-based materials under the same conditions. The gas analyses revealed that the amount of HD generated by monolayer graphene was approximately the same as for the known hydrogen catalysts, such as zirconia, magnesium oxide and copper, but graphene was required only in tiny quantities, less than 100 times of the latter catalysts.

“Our paper shows that freestanding graphene is quite different from both graphite and atomically flat graphene that are chemically extremely inert. We have also proved that nanoscale corrugations are more important for catalysis than the ‘usual suspects’ such as vacancies, edges and other defects on graphene’s surface” said Dr Pengzhan Sun, first author of the paper.

Lead author of the paper Prof. Geim added, “As nanorippling naturally occurs in all atomically thin crystals, because of thermal fluctuations and unavoidable local mechanical strain, other 2D materials may also show similarly enhanced reactivity. As for graphene, we can certainly expect it to be catalytically and chemically active in other reactions, not only those involving hydrogen.”

“2D materials are most often perceived as atomically flat sheets, and effects caused by unavoidable nanoscale corrugations have so far been overlooked. Our work shows that those effects can be dramatic, which has important implications for the use of 2D materials. For example, bulk molybdenum sulphide and other chalcogenides are often employed as 3D catalysts. Now we should wonder if they could be even more active in their 2D form”.

Advanced materials is one of The University of Manchester’s research beacons – examples of pioneering discoveries, interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-sector partnerships tackling some of the planet’s biggest questions. #ResearchBeacons

PNAS
From the science paper

Fig. 1.

Hydrogen transport through graphene and hBN membranes. (A) Schematic of the microcontainers. (B) AFM image of one of our microcontainers sealed with an hBN monolayer. The white curve shows the height profile along the membrane center. (C) Height profiles for two containers sealed with graphene and hBN before and after their storage in hydrogen for a few weeks (color-coded curves). T = 295 ± 3 K; P = 1 bar. Note the different scales for the x- and y-axes, which serve to show changes in δ and exaggerate the inward curving of 2D membranes. This sagging is caused by graphene’s adhesion to inner walls of the microcontainers. The macroscopic curvature due to sagging was less than 4% and insufficient to cause hydrogen dissociation, according to theory ([18*], [19]). Nanoscale rippling provides considerably higher curvature and strain ([20], [22], [23]). (D) Changes in the height Δδ for hBN (solid symbols) and graphene (open) membranes measured over one month. Each symbol in (D and E) denotes a different microcontainer with more than 10 tested for each material. The red dashed lines outline the full range of Δδ for the hBN membrane. Green line: Best linear fit for the graphene data shown by the green symbols. (E) Permeation rates evaluated from the Δδ measurements. Note a break in the y-axis in (E): The scale is linear below 10^10 and logarithmic above. Error bars: SD for the linear fits of Δδ as a function of time in (D) and shown only if larger than the symbols. Shaded areas: overall SD for the graphene and hBN measurements. (F) Energy profiles for dissociation of H2 on graphene and hBN ripples for the case of two hydrogen atoms being adsorbed at the central positions as shown schematically in the Insets. Other adsorption positions are less favorable for hydrogen splitting as discussed in SI Appendix. The curvature t/D (Low-Left Inset) is 12% for both curves in (F).
*References in the science paper

Fig. 2.

Raman spectroscopy of graphene exposed to hydrogen. (A) Raman spectra of monolayer graphene after its exposure to 1-bar hydrogen at 600 °C for 2 h (red curve). Blue curve: same but for helium. Black curve: same measurements but for atomically flat graphene placed on graphite without alignment and exposed to hydrogen at 600 °C for 4 h. The spectra were taken at room T and, for clarity, are shifted vertically. All spectroscopy parameters were exactly the same: wavelength, 514.5 nm; power, ~1.7 mW; spot size, ~2 μm; acquisition time for each curve, 1 h. The Inset magnifies the D peak region on the red and black curves with the intensity for the black curve being amplified 10 times. (B) Raman spectra of graphene in hydrogen taken in situ with increasing T (color coded). Inset: T dependence of the D peak intensity relative to that of the G peak (circles). Squares: hydrogen-induced D peak decreases after 4 and 8 h of annealing at 600 °C in a helium atmosphere (top and bottom squares, respectively). The spectra were taken from the same spots away from graphene edges. Error bars: SD for at least three different spots used in the Raman measurements. Solid curve: guide to the eye showing the Arrhenius dependence with an activation energy of 0.4 eV.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The University of Manchester (UK) Via “phys.org” : “Astronomers measure the heartbeat of spinning stars”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

Via

“phys.org”

2.23.23

𝑃-𝑃¤ diagram showing pulsars with detected drifting subpulses with stars, 𝑃3-only pulsars with diamonds, and the other pulsars in the sample with the dots.

An international team of scientist have used the MeerKAT radio telescope to observe the pulsing heartbeat of the universe as neutron stars are born and form swirling lightning storms which last for millions of years.

SKA SARAO Meerkat [SKA-Mid] Telescope (SA), 90 km outside the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, SA.

Radio pulsars are spinning neutron stars from which we can observe flashes of radio waves in the manner of light pulses from a lighthouse. With masses of about one and a half times the mass of the sun, and sizes of only about 25 km, neutron stars are the densest stars known. They rotate extremely fast, typically once every thousandth of a second to once every ten seconds, only gradually slowing down as they age.

Now, a team of collaborative astronomers have published the largest pulsar survey ever in the MNRAS [below].

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discovered pulsars with radio astronomy. Jocelyn Bell at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Cambridge (UK), taken for the Daily Herald newspaper in 1968. Denied the Nobel.

Neutron stars are also the strongest magnets in the universe, on average a million times stronger than the strongest magnet on Earth. Such extreme properties present an opportunity to test the laws of physics with exceptionally high accuracy. Even 60 years after their discovery, fundamental questions about the nature of these exotic objects remain.

No two pulsars are the same, and headway in these exciting areas of physics requires sensitive observations of as many pulsars as possible. The “Thousand Pulsar Array” (TPA) project is an international collaboration aimed at pursuing these aims by exploiting the unprecedented sensitivity of the MeerKAT radio telescope. This consists of 64 antennas in the Karoo desert in South Africa, and is a stepping stone towards the Square Kilometer Array, in which the U.K. has leadership.

The findings are published in two parts, one of which is led by researchers at The University of Manchester, which details the findings of the study of over one million individual flashes recorded. The sequence of flashes can be visualized as a train of pulses.

Dr. Patrick Weltevrede of The University of Manchester said, “Observing a pulsar is like checking the pulse of a pulsar, revealing the particularities of its ‘heartbeat.’ Each individual pulse is different in shape and strength.”

For some pulsars ordered patterns of diagonal stripes appear when visualized. Dr. Xiaoxi Song, Ph.D. student at The University of Manchester explains, “The superb quality of the TPA data and our sophisticated analysis allowed us to reveal these patterns for many pulsars for the first time. These patterns can be explained by the lightning storms swirling around the star. The findings point to something fundamental about how pulsars operate.”

After the pulsar is born, the lightning storms swirl around the star fast and chaotically. After a few million years, the lightning storms settle down and the patterns become slower and steadier. This turns out to be the opposite of what models predict. Eventually, after a few billion years the lightning will stop altogether, and pulsars will no longer be detectable.

The MeerKAT team recently received the prestigious Group Award of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the TPA project has now reached an extraordinary milestone: detailed observations of more than 1,200 pulsars, representing more than a third of the known pulsars.

In accompanying work, led by researchers at the University of Oxford, the statistical properties of the pulse shapes are presented. Dr. Bettina Posselt explains, “We find that the most important property governing the radio emission of a pulsar is its so-called spin-down power. It quantifies the energy set free by a neutron star each second as its rotation slows down. Some of this spin-down power is used to produce the observed radio waves.”

Models predict that the ionized gas surrounding the star continuously discharges in what can be compared to lightning storms, producing the radio pulses. The new data indicate that the spin-down power influences how high above the neutron star surface the radio emission takes place and how much energy the charged particles are endowed with. Since there is evidence that the spin-down power decreases with age, and the 1,200 pulsars exhibit large variety in spin-down power, the TPA data are ideal to study the aging of neutron stars.

The new data shows that even pulsars with the least spin-down power emit intense radio emission and can be detected up to large distances. This result suggests there may be a larger population of pulsars yet to be discovered than previously expected.

The TPA data from both projects are now publicly available. They enable the international community to pursue further studies both on the properties of these pulsars and those of the intervening interstellar space.

MNRAS

MNRAS
For further illustrations see this science paper.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The University of Manchester (UK) Via “phys.org” : “Nile countries could gain economic benefits from new framework”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

Via

“phys.org”

1.9.23
Joe Stafford

Trade-offs and synergies between Ethiopian, Sudanese and Egyptian economy-wide and river system performance objectives. a, Parallel coordinates plot of the performance under efficient designs of an adaptive GERD management policy across 29 climate change projections for 2020–2045. b–i, Box plots of some of the metrics shown in a for selected designs across the 29 climate change projections. All change values are calculated from a baseline in which the GERD is operated on the basis of the Washington draft proposal. The box plots in b–i correspond to the lines with similar colors in a. The ends of the boxes in b–i represent the upper and lower quartiles, the solid vertical lines inside the boxes mark the medians, the dashed vertical lines mark the means, the circles show the data points and the whiskers extend to the maximum and minimum values, excluding the outliers. The firm power values are calculated on the basis of a 90% reliability, and the GDP values are discounted at a 3% rate. Credit: Nature Climate Change (2023).

New research led by The University of Manchester has developed unique river basin modeling software which, for the first time, combines reservoir management, economy-wide performance, and artificial intelligence techniques to design adaptive plans for various climate change situations.

Published in Nature Climate Change [below], it reveals solutions that can provide greater economic benefits for the nations affected by the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)—Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt—when compared with a negotiated proposal.

The dam has triggered political tensions between the three countries, with negotiations yet to reach an agreement on how to fill the reservoir and on its operation during periods of drought.

Uncertainty exists about the impact of future climate change on the Nile’s economies and water-dependent sectors—this further complicates the frictions over the GERD, which have been ongoing since 2011 and remain unresolved as work on the dam nears completion.

Negotiations have not thus far considered the impact of climate change on the dam, and proposals for its management often result in economic gains for one country being prioritized to the detriment of the others.

The implications of climate change uncertainty for the Nile’s hydrology (for example, streamflow and irrigation demands) and the economies of the countries it flows through (for example, future economic development trajectory, population growth and climate policies) mean non-adaptive dam management could perform poorly especially when rules are designed based on current and past conditions.

Adaptive management plans involve short-term actions and adaptation mechanisms as climate change unfolds, and using such plans to manage the Nile’s infrastructure helps it to better cope with climate change uncertainty. Designing management strategies for large dams in such ways benefits from a multi-dimensional approach to encourage collaboration, identify efficient trade-offs and optimize economic performance.

This new study, which uses unique joint river-system and economy modeling simulators coupled with artificial intelligence techniques, enables the estimation of economic and engineering performance metrics under various management plans and climate change projections. It reveals how several compromises exist which can improve performance for all three countries compared to the latest published proposal.

“Nile negotiations have aimed to produce static long-term agreements, but there is high uncertainty on the medium and long-term impacts of climate change on the basin’s rainfall, streamflow, temperature, and socio-economic systems—this paper proposes an analytical approach that can help design adaptive agreements given these uncertainties,” says Dr. Mohammed Basheer, lead author of the paper.

Science paper:
Nature Climate Change
See the science paper for instructive material with images.

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The University of Manchester (UK): “Graphene as ‘the philosopher’s stone’:: turning waste into gold”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

8.16.22

Gold extraction recycling using graphene. (Image: University of Manchester)

Throughout history, alchemists believed in the existence of the philosopher’s stone: a substance that could turn cheap substances into precious gold. Now scientists from The University of Manchester, Tsinghua University in China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have shown that graphene can be a kind of philosopher’s stone, allowing gold extraction from waste containing only trace amounts of gold (down to billionth of a percent).

This new, seemingly magical application of graphene works quite straightforwardly: add graphene into a solution containing traces of gold and after a few minutes pure gold appears on graphene sheets with no other chemicals or energy input involved. After this you can extract your pure gold by simply burning the graphene off.

The research, published in Nature Communications [below], shows that 1 gram of graphene can be sufficient for extracting nearly 2 grams of gold. As graphene costs less than US$0.1 per gram this can be very profitable with gold priced at around US$70 per gram.

Extracting gold from waste with graphene. https://www.nanowerk.com

Dr Yang Su from Tsinghua University, who led the research efforts, commented: “This apparent magic is essentially a simple electrochemical process. Unique interactions between graphene and gold ions drive the process and also yield exceptional selectivity. Only gold is extracted with no other ions or salts.”

Gold is used in many industries including consumer electronics (mobile phones, laptops etc.) and, when the products are eventually discarded, little of the electronic waste is recycled. The graphene-based process with its high extraction capacity and high selectivity can reclaim close to 100% of gold from electronic waste. This offers an enticing solution for addressing the gold sustainability problem and e-waste challenges.

“Graphene turns rubbish into gold, literally,” added Professor Andre Geim from The University of Manchester, another lead author and Nobel laureate responsible for the first isolation of graphene.

“Not only are our findings promising for making this part of the economy more sustainable, but they also emphasize how different atomically-thin materials can be from their parents, well-known bulk materials,” he added. “Graphite-for example-is worthless for extracting gold while graphene almost makes the “philosopher’s stone”.

Professor Hui-ming Cheng, one of the main authors from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, commented: “With the continuing search for revolutionary applications of graphene, our discovery that the material can be used to recycle gold from electronic waste brings additional excitement to the research community and developing graphene industries.”

Science paper:
Nature Communications

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The University of Manchester (UK) and The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (UK) via “Science Alert (AU)” : “Humanity’s First-Ever Exoplanet Discovery Was an Unbelievable Fluke”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

and

Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (UK)

Via

“Science Alert (AU)”

18 JULY 2022
MICHELLE STARR

Artist’s impression of Lich and its worlds. (Pablo Carlos Budassi/Wikimedia Commons)

Exoplanets: Left to right Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, with Earth-except for Earth these are artists’ concepts. Image credit: NASA Ames/ JPL-Caltech.

In the early 1990s, planetary history was made. In 1992, two astronomers, Alexander Wolszczan and Dale Frail, published a paper in Nature [below] announcing the discovery of the very first planets outside the Solar System.

These two extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, were immediately intriguing. They were rocky worlds 4.3 and 3.9 times the mass of Earth, whirling in orbit around a type of dead star known as a millisecond pulsar, named PSR B1257+12, or Lich for short (Lich is a powerful living-dead creature in folklore). A third exoplanet 0.2 times the mass of Earth was confirmed to be orbiting the pulsar in 1994.

Now an analysis of hundreds of pulsars has revealed that such exoplanets are incredibly rare – almost vanishingly so.

Pulsars are pretty rare; only around 3,320 are known in the Milky Way at time of writing. Of those, astronomers now say, fewer than 0.5 percent are likely to have rocky, Earth-like worlds in orbit. That’s just 16 pulsars.

_______________________________________________
Women in STEM – Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell Discovered pulsars

In 1967 Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars with radio astronomy. Jocelyn Bell at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, University of Cambridge(UK), taken for the Daily Herald newspaper in 1968. Denied the Nobel.

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell 2009. Astronomical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943 – )

Biography

British astrophysicist, scholar and trailblazer Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the space-based phenomena known as pulsars, going on to establish herself as an esteemed leader in her field.Who Is Jocelyn Bell Burnell?
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is a British astrophysicist and astronomer. As a research assistant, she helped build a large radio telescope and discovered pulsars, providing the first direct evidence for the existence of rapidly spinning neutron stars. In addition to her affiliation with Open University, she has served as dean of science at the University of Bath and president of the Royal Astronomical Society. Bell Burnell has also earned countless awards and honors during her distinguished academic career.

Early Life

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born Susan Jocelyn Bell on July 15, 1943, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her parents were educated Quakers who encouraged their daughter’s early interest in science with books and trips to a nearby observatory. Despite her appetite for learning, however, Bell Burnell had difficulty in grade school and failed an exam intended to measure her readiness for higher education.

Undeterred, her parents sent her to England to study at a Quaker boarding school, where she quickly distinguished herself in her science classes. Having proven her aptitude for higher learning, Bell Burnell attended the University of Glasgow, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1965.

Little Green Men

In 1965, Bell Burnell began her graduate studies in radio astronomy at Cambridge University. One of several research assistants and students working under astronomers Anthony Hewish, her thesis advisor, and Martin Ryle, over the next two years she helped construct a massive radio telescope designed to monitor quasars. By 1967, it was operational and Bell Burnell was tasked with analyzing the data it produced. After spending endless hours pouring over the charts, she noticed some anomalies that did not fit with the patterns produced by quasars and called them to Hewish’s attention.

Over the ensuing months, the team systematically eliminated all possible sources of the radio pulses—which they affectionately labeled Little Green Men, in reference to their potentially artificial origins—until they were able to deduce that they were made by neutron stars, fast-spinning collapsed stars too small to form black holes.

Pulsars and Nobel Prize Controversy

Their findings were published in the February 1968 issue of Nature and caused an immediate sensation. Intrigued as much by the novelty of a woman scientist as by the astronomical significance of the team’s discovery, which was labeled pulsars—for pulsating radio stars—the press picked up the story and showered Bell Burnell with attention. That same year, she earned her Ph.D. in radio astronomy from Cambridge University.

However, in 1974, only Hewish and Ryle received the Nobel Prize for Physics for their work. Many in the scientific community raised their objections, believing that Bell Burnell had been unfairly snubbed. However, Bell Burnell humbly rejected the notion, feeling that the prize had been properly awarded given her status as a graduate student, though she has also acknowledged that gender discrimination may have been a contributing factor.

Life on the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Nobel Prize or not, Bell Burnell’s depth of knowledge regarding radio astronomy and the electromagnetic spectrum has earned her a lifetime of respect in the scientific community and an esteemed career in academia. After receiving her doctorate from Cambridge, she taught and studied gamma ray astronomy at the University of Southampton. Bell Burnell then spent eight years as a professor at University College London, where she focused on x-ray astronomy.

During this same time, she began her affiliation with Open University, where she would later work as a professor of physics while studying neurons and binary stars, and also conducted research in infrared astronomy at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. She was the Dean of Science at the University of Bath from 2001 to 2004, and has been a visiting professor at such esteemed institutions as Princeton University and Oxford University.

Array of Honors and Achievements

In recognition of her achievements, Bell Burnell has received countless awards and honors, including Commander and Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1999 and 2007, respectively; an Oppenheimer prize in 1978; and the 1989 Herschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society, for which she would serve as president from 2002 to 2004. She was president of the Institute of Physics from 2008 to 2010, and has served as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2014. Bell Burnell also has honorary degrees from an array of universities too numerous to mention.

Personal Life

In 1968, Jocelyn married Martin Burnell, from whom she took her surname, with the two eventually divorcing in 1993. The two have a son, Gavin, who has also become a physicist.

A documentary on Bell Burnell’s life, Northern Star, aired on the BBC in 2007.

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Purnell at Perimeter Institute Oct 26, 2018.
_______________________________________________

Millisecond pulsars are even rarer, with around 550 known in the Milky Way. That makes humanity’s very first exoplanet discoveries pretty freaking amazing.

All dead stars are fascinating, but pulsars add a bit of a kick to the interesting factor.

They’re a kind of neutron star; that’s the core of a dead star that has reached the end of its atomic fusion lifespan, ejected most of its outer material, and collapsed down into an object whose density is only outstripped by black holes. Neutron stars can be up to around 2.3 times the mass of the Sun, packed into a sphere just 20 kilometers (12 miles) across.

A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that has beams of radiation shooting from its poles. Such is its orientation that, as the pulsar rotates, its beams sweep past Earth, making the star appear to pulse. Think of a really dense cosmic lighthouse.

And because some pulsars have extremely fast rotation – on millisecond scales – those light pulses also occur on millisecond scales. For a better idea of what that means, you can listen to pulsar pulses translated into sound here.

This is a pretty extreme environment. It’s possible for them to have exoplanets; since the discovery of Lich and its worlds, a handful of other pulsars have been discovered with exoplanets. However, most of these planets are giants, and those that aren’t can get a bit weird, such as an ultradense world thought to be the remains of a white dwarf star cannibalized by the pulsar.

A team of astronomers led by Iuliana Nițu of the University of Manchester in the UK wanted to find out how common pulsar planets are. They conducted a survey of 800 pulsars monitored by the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK, looking for blips in the timing of the pulses that might indicate the presence of orbiting exoplanets.

“Pulsars are incredibly interesting and exotic objects,” Nițu said.

“Exactly 30 years ago, the first extrasolar planets were discovered around a pulsar, but we are yet to understand how these planets can form and survive in such extreme conditions. Finding out how common these are, and what they look like is a crucial step towards this.”

Their search parameters were set to find worlds from 1 percent of the Moon’s mass up to 100 times the mass of Earth, with orbital periods between 20 days and 17 years. These search parameters would have detected the larger of Lich’s two worlds, Poltergeist and Phobetor, which have orbital periods of 66 and 98 days respectively.

The team found that two-thirds of the pulsars in their sample are extremely unlikely to host exoplanets much heavier than Earth, and fewer than 0.5 percent are likely to host exoplanets in the mass range of Poltergeist and Phobetor.

The presence of exoplanets similar to the smaller exoplanet in the Lich system, Draugr, is a little harder to gauge.

Draugr, with its small mass and 25-day orbit, would not be detectable in 95 percent of the team’s sample, since it would get lost in noise. It’s unclear how many pulsars would be likely to host such tiny worlds; or even whether it’s possible for those worlds to exist outside a multi-planet system.

Of the 800 pulsars, 15 showed periodic signals that could be attributed to exoplanets. However, the team believes that most of them can be attributed to the pulsar’s magnetosphere. One pulsar in particular, PSR J2007+3120, looked like a promising candidate for follow-up exoplanet surveys.

That means just 0.5 percent of pulsars are likely to have Earth-like worlds, the team concluded, which means the likelihood of us stumbling across a far distant planet with a rare millisecond pulsar for a star is pretty tiny.

The team also found that pulsar systems are not biased towards any range of exoplanet size or mass. However, any such exoplanets around a pulsar would have extremely elliptical orbits. This is in stark contrast to the nearly circular orbits seen in the Solar System, and suggests that, however they formed, the process was different from the one that produces planets around baby stars just starting their life.

The team’s research was presented last week at the National Astronomy Meeting in the UK, and published in the MNRAS.

Alexander Wolszczan and Dale Frail published their findings in 1992 in Nature.

See the full article here .

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The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (UK) comprises research activities in astronomy and astrophysics at The University of Manchester, the world leading facilities of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the

e-MERLIN
European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network

SKA-Square Kilometer Array

SKA- South Africa

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The University of Manchester (UK) via “phys.org” : “Astronomers link 64 telescopes to observe the structure of the universe”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

via

“phys.org”

June 20, 2022
Ben Robinson | University of Manchester

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain.

An international team of astronomers have for the first time combined the power of 64 radio telescope dishes to detect the faint signatures of neutral hydrogen gas across cosmological scales.

The feat was achieved using the South African-based MeerKAT telescope, a precursor to the world’s largest radio observatory, the SKA Observatory (SKAO), which will probe the universe in unprecedented detail.

SKA SARAO Meerkat Telescope (SA), 90 km outside the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, SA.

A primary aim for the SKAO is to understand the evolution and content of the universe along with the mechanisms which drive its accelerating expansion. One way to achieve this is by observing the universe’s structure on the largest scales. On these scales, entire galaxies can be considered as single points and analysis of their distribution reveals clues about the nature of gravity and mysterious phenomena such as dark matter and dark energy.

Radio telescopes are a fantastic instrument for this since they can detect radiation at wavelengths of 21cm generated by neutral hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. By analyzing 3D maps of hydrogen spanning millions of light-years, we probe the total distribution of matter in the universe.

The SKAO, which has its headquarters based at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, is currently under construction. However, there are already pathfinder telescopes, such as the 64-dish array MeerKAT, in place to guide its design. Based in the Karoo Desert and operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), MeerKAT will eventually go on to be a part of the full SKAO.

MeerKAT and the SKAO will primarily operate as interferometers, where the array of dishes are combined as one giant telescope capable of imaging distant objects with high resolution. “However, the interferometer will not be sensitive enough to the largest scales most interesting for cosmologists studying the universe,” explained the co-lead author of the new research paper, Steven Cunnington. “Therefore, we instead use the array as a collection of 64 individual telescopes which allows them to map the giant volumes of sky required for cosmology.”

The single-dish mode of operation has been driven by a team at the University of the Western Cape, with several observations already conducted with MeerKAT. This ambitious project involves many other institutions spanning four continents. In the new research for MNRAS, a team which includes Manchester-based astronomers Cunnington, Laura Wolz and Keith Grainge, present the first ever cosmological detection using this single-dish technique.

The new detection is of a shared clustering pattern between MeerKAT’s maps and galaxy positions determined by the optical Anglo-Australian Telescope.

The Australian Astronomical Observatory AAT Anglo Australian Telescope, at Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia, at an altitude of 1,165 m (3,822 ft).

Siding Spring Mountain Observatory – Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics (AU) with Anglo-Australian Telescope dome visible near centre of image in Coonabarabran, Warrumbungle National Park, New South Wales, Siding Spring Mountain [Mount Woorat] at an altitude of 1,165 m (3,822 ft).

Since it is known that these galaxies trace the overall matter of the universe, the strong statistical correlation between the radio maps and the galaxies shows the MeerKAT telescope is detecting large-scale cosmic structure. This is the first time such detection has been made using a multi-dish array operating as individual telescopes. The full SKAO will rely on this technique and this therefore marks an important milestone in the roadmap for the cosmology science case with the SKAO.

“This detection was made with just a small amount of pilot survey data,” revealed Cunnington. “It’s encouraging to imagine what will be achieved as MeerKAT continues to make increasingly larger observations.”

“For many years I have worked towards forecasting the future capability of the SKAO. To now reach a stage where we are developing the tools we will need and demonstrating their success with real data is incredibly exciting. This only marks the beginning of what we hope will be a continuous showcase of results which advances our understanding of the universe.”

See the full article here .

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

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The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK)

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope

From The University of Manchester (UK): “Astronomers discover how galaxies form through mergers”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

15 June, 2022

Ben Robinson
News and Media Relations Officer
ben.robinson@manchester.ac.uk
0161 275 8388

Astronomers in the UK announce today that they have established how galaxies like our own Milky Way formed over 10 billion years of cosmic time through an abundance of separate galaxies colliding together.

Astronomers discover how galaxies form through mergers.

Galaxies are the largest single objects in the universe, and the origin of their formation is a very old question without any obvious answers. A major study submitted this week to the American Astronomical Society’s The Astrophysical Journal has provided a solution to this problem.

Astronomers led by Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy, Christopher Conselice at The University of Manchester, have now established that this effect of merging is one of the dominant processes whereby galaxies come to be.

These researchers have concluded this decades-long study of galaxies and how they formed over the past 10 billion years revealing that these galaxy mergers are one of the most important methods for forming galaxies. The average massive galaxy over the past 10 billion years will undergo around 3 mergers with other galaxies, which will more than doubles their mass. This study has thus shown that mergers are a very effective way for galaxies to form.

“This also suggests that our own Milky Way galaxy has likely undergone at least one of these significant mergers during its history, which radically changed its shape and formation history,” Said Professor Conselice. “Mergers, such as the ones in this study, trigger star formation, which may be the origin event for how stars including our own Sun formed, as well as feed the matter that grows central black holes.”

Galaxies in the nearby universe come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them, including our own, are very massive with over a trillion stars and a spiral pattern. Others are enormous collections of stars with a spheroidal or ellipsoidal structure with no particular patterns. The history of these enormous systems is largely unknown.

One possible way in which galaxies can grow in mass is when two galaxies smash together to form an entirely new galaxy, a process known as merging. Galaxy mergers have been known for over half a century, but their role in how we obtain the massive galaxies we see today has always been an enormous mystery and a fundamental question in cosmology. While a favorite theoretical idea, we could previously only guess at how the process has actually occurred.

The result of this study originates from searching back 10 billion years for galaxies in close proximity, or those that are in ‘pairs’. These close galaxies will eventually merge together to form a new system over the course of a billion years. By catching these galaxies in the merger process, this study determined the merger history, and thus the formation history of galaxies in the universe. Before this study, mostly only theoretical estimates of this have been available. This study is a direct measurement of this process.

Conselice said, “Due to the total number of galaxies in the universe, over the past 10 billion years, about 2 trillion of these merger events would have occurred. Many of these events will be detectable with upcoming gravitational wave experiments as these are the most common massive coalescence events to occur in the universe.”

This previously unknown history now allows us to understand galaxies in a way that we have not previously. Future work by this team and others will reveal the implications for this finding for understanding the development of new stars and black holes in galaxies over this cosmic epoch.

Other participants in the study are Carl Mundy and Leonardo Ferreira from the University of Nottingham and Kenneth Duncan from the University of Edinburgh.

See the full article here .

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, U Manchester part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK).

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope.

From The University of Manchester (UK) and The Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering via phys.org: “Researchers engineer electrically tunable graphene devices to study rare physics”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

and

The Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering

via

phys.org

April 7, 2022

An international team, co-led by researchers at The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute (NGI) in the UK and the Penn State College of Engineering in the US, has developed a tunable graphene-based platform that allows for fine control over the interaction between light and matter in the terahertz (THz) spectrum to reveal rare phenomena known as exceptional points. The feat could contribute to the development of beyond-5G wireless technology for high-speed communication networks. Credit: Pietro Steiner, The University of Manchester.

An international team, co-led by researchers at The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute (NGI) in the UK and the Penn State College of Engineering in the US, has developed a tunable graphene-based platform that allows for fine control over the interaction between light and matter in the terahertz (THz) spectrum to reveal rare phenomena known as exceptional points. The team published their results today in Science.

The work could advance optoelectronic technologies to better generate, control and sense light and potentially communications, according to the researchers. They demonstrated a way to control THz waves, which exist at frequencies between those of microwaves and infrared waves. The feat could contribute to the development of ‘beyond-5G’ wireless technology for high-speed communication networks.

Weak and strong interactions

Light and matter can couple, interacting at different levels: weakly, where they might be correlated but do not change each other’s constituents; or strongly, where their interactions can fundamentally change the system. The ability to control how the coupling shifts from weak to strong and back again has been a major challenge to advancing optoelectronic devices—a challenge researchers have now solved.

“We have demonstrated a new class of optoelectronic devices using concepts of topology—a branch of mathematics studying properties of geometric objects,” said co-corresponding author Coskun Kocabas, professor of 2D device materials at The University of Manchester. “Using exceptional point singularities, we show that topological concepts can be used to engineer optoelectronic devices that enable new ways to manipulate terahertz light.”

Kocabas is also affiliated with the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, headquartered in Manchester.

Exceptional points are spectral singularities—points at which any two spectral values in an open system coalesce. They are, unsurprisingly, exceptionally sensitive and respond to even the smallest changes to the system, revealing curious yet desirable characteristics, according to co-corresponding author Şahin K. Özdemir, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State.

“At an exceptional point, the energy landscape of the system is considerably modified, resulting in reduced dimensionality and skewed topology,” said Özdemir, who is also affiliated with the Materials Research Institute, Penn State. “This, in turn, enhances the system’s response to perturbations, modifies the local density of states leading to the enhancement of spontaneous emission rates and leads to a plethora of phenomena. Control of exceptional points, and the physical processes that occur at them, could lead to applications for better sensors, imaging, lasers and much more.”

Platform composition

The platform the researchers developed consists of a graphene-based tunable THz resonator, with a gold-foil gate electrode forming a bottom reflective mirror. Above it, a graphene layer is book-ended with electrodes, forming a tunable top mirror. A non-volatile ionic liquid electrolyte layer sits between the mirrors, enabling control of the top mirror’s reflectivity by changing the applied voltage. In the middle of the device, between the mirrors, are molecules of alpha lactose, a sugar commonly found in milk.

The system is controlled by two adjusters. One raises the lower mirror to change the length of the cavity—tuning the frequency of resonation to couple the light with the collective vibrational modes of the organic sugar molecules, which serve as a fixed number of oscillators for the system. The other adjuster changes the voltage applied to the top graphene mirror—altering the graphene’s reflective properties to transition the energy loss imbalances to adjust coupling strength. The delicate, fine tuning shifts weakly coupled terahertz light and organic molecules to become strongly coupled and vice versa.

“Exceptional points coincide with the crossover point between the weak and strong coupling regimes of terahertz light with collective molecular vibrations,” Özdemir said.

He noted that these singularity points are typically studied and observed in the coupling of analogous modes or systems, such as two optical modes, electronic modes or acoustic modes.

“This work is one of rare cases where exceptional points are demonstrated to emerge in the coupling of two modes with different physical origins,” Kocabas said. “Due to the topology of the exceptional points, we observed a significant modulation in the magnitude and phase of the terahertz light, which could find applications in next-generation THz communications.”

Unprecedented phase modulation in the THz spectrum

As the researchers apply voltage and adjust the resonance, they drive the system to an exceptional point and beyond. Before, at and beyond the exceptional point, the geometric properties—the topology—of the system change.

One such change is the phase modulation, which describes how a wave changes as it propagates and interacts in the THz field. Controlling the phase and amplitude of THz waves is a technological challenge, the researchers said, but their platform demonstrates unprecedented levels of phase modulation. The researchers moved the system through exceptional points, as well as along loops around exceptional points in different directions, and measured how it responded through the changes. Depending on the system’s topology at the point of measurement, phase modulation could range from zero to four magnitudes larger.

“We can electrically steer the device through an exceptional point, which enables electrical control on reflection topology,” said first author M. Said Ergoktas. “Only by controlling the topology of the system electronically could we achieve these huge modulations.”

According to the researchers, the topological control of light-matter interactions around an exceptional point enabled by the graphene-based platform has potential applications ranging from topological optoelectronic and quantum devices to topological control of physical and chemical processes.

See the full article here .

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From The Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering

at

The Pennsylvania State University

The Penn State College of Engineering is the engineering school of the Pennsylvania State University, headquartered at the University Park campus in University Park, Pennsylvania. It was established in 1896, under the leadership of George W. Atherton. Today, with 13 academic departments and degree programs, over 11,000 enrolled undergraduate and graduate students (8,166 at the University Park campus, and 3,059 at other campuses), and research expenditures of $124 million for the 2016-2017 academic year, the Penn State College of Engineering is one of the leading engineering schools in the United States. It is estimated that at least one out of every fifty engineers in the United States got their bachelor’s degree from Penn State.

The appointment of George Atherton as president in 1882 created an era of extraordinary stability and growth for Penn State. Top priority was given to enlarging the engineering program, and Atherton immediately approved an equipment expenditure of $3,000 for practicums and laboratory sessions. Atherton held strongly to the view that Penn State should be an engineering and industrial institution, rather than a classical one, and that classics should not be a “leading object” in a college curriculum. The logical conclusion of this was that mechanic arts were also to be placed on par with agriculture, given the rapid industrialization of the nation. All students now took identical coursework during their freshman and sophomore years, with a specialization in engineering reserved for their junior and senior years.

Additionally, short courses (three in agriculture, one in chemistry, one in mining, and one in elementary mechanics) began to be offered, with no admission or degree requirements.

Despite the improvements to the civil engineering curriculum, Atherton knew that further evolution was needed. To that end, he challenged Louis Reber, a mathematics instructor, to attend The Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate work in mechanical engineering – and to pay particular attention to the processes and procedures used for engineering education – in order to develop Penn State’s two-year mechanic arts program into a four-year mechanical engineering curriculum. Reber took to the challenge, and also studied engineering education methods in use at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Stevens Institute of Technology, Washington University in St. Louis, and The University of Minnesota to establish a baseline for Penn State’s program, which at that time consisted of mechanical drawing, woodworking, and carpentry. Reber also supervised the installation of a forge and foundry, and in 1884 asked for $3,500 to construct new building solely devoted to mechanic arts; Atherton immediately approved Reber’s request, and the resulting building was the first structure erected for purely academic purposes. Machinery and equipment for the building were purchased at reduced prices from equipment manufacturers based on the advertising potential and inherent goodwill to be found in labeling items “for educational purposes.”

In addition to providing instruction, the mechanical engineering department also managed the pumphouse, steam heating plant, and (beginning in 1887) the fifty-horsepower steam engine and generator used to power the incandescent lighting at the campus. The students thus gained practical experience via the chores required to manage and maintain these machines. The creation of the mechanical engineering curriculum segregated students into “general” and “technical” paths (not entirely dissimilar to modern-day general education and major-specific instruction requirements), and the curriculum featured what is now considered “typical” coursework in science and mathematics, as well as several practicums (one for each of the fall, winter, and spring terms) to develop skills such as drawing, pattern making, surveying, chemistry, mechanics, forging, and machine construction.

Thornton Osmond also issued recommendations that electrical engineering be spun off into its own field (it had previously resided in the physics department); Atherton approved this request, and the Department of Physics and Electrotechnics was created in 1887 to explore the practical applications of electricity. The revised engineering curricula proved popular: of the 92 students enrolled for the 1887-88 academic year, over 35% were in engineering (18 mechanical, 15 civil). The subsequent year’s enrollment rose to 113, of which 42% in engineering (22 mechanical, 17 civil, 9 electrical).

The growing popularity of the engineering curricula also required physical growth of the campus. In 1891, $100,000 was allotted to construct a building devoted entirely to engineering. This building, named Main Engineering, was dedicated on February 22, 1893, with most of the dedication speech focused on the importance of an engineering education to national prosperity and progress. Additional machinery, including Allis-Chalmers triple-expansion steam engine (extensively modified for laboratory instruction and experimentation), was purchased and installed. The engineering program continued to expand its offerings: in 1893, the trustees approved the addition of a course in mining engineering, with Magnus C. Ihlseng (formerly of The Colorado School of Mines) named professor and department head. Electrical engineering fully split from Physics and Electrotechnics, becoming its own department headed by John Price Jackson –who, at age 24, is easily the youngest department head on campus. By 1890, Main Engineering housed four engineering departments (civil, mechanical, mining, and electrical) in space originally intended for two. Increases in enrollment remained unceasing: in the 1890-91 academic year there were 127 undergraduates, 73 of which are in engineering (37 civil, 19 mechanical, 17 electrotechnical); by 1893, this had increased to 181 students, 128 in engineering (57 electrical, 44 mechanical, 18 civil, 9 mining). Needless to say, the overcrowding became problematic.

Coursework expansions were also underway. The department of civil engineering began to include instruction in sanitary and hydraulic engineering; however, students still did not yet have the opportunity to specialize in specific facet of desired profession outside of lab and thesis work. In 1894, a new curriculum requirement was added: all freshmen, sophomore, and junior engineering students were required to take a two-week summer course to gain field experience via visits to coal mines, railroad shops, foundries, power stations, and similar businesses. This marked the first offering of a summer session in Penn State history.

The increasing demand led to the formation of seven schools within Penn State. The Second Morrill Act (1890) gave each land-grant institution $15,000, which increased at a rate of $1,000 per year (to a maximum of $25,000), to be invested in instruction in agriculture, mechanic arts, etc. with “specific reference to their applications in the industry of life.” Engineering absorbed most of the at the expense of development of non-technical curricula. Atherton remained convinced that the college should increase instruction in liberal studies for all students, to become “[men] of broad culture and good citizen[s].” To that end, the establishment of the seven schools was intended to eliminate duplication of instruction and resources while also encouraging and facilitating cooperation among related departments. Perhaps most importantly, it also shifted the burden of administration from the president’s office onto the deans. Louis Reber became the first dean of the school of engineering, which exercised authority over the civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering departments. The mining engineering curriculum formed the core for the School of Mines, with Magnus Ihlseng named as dean.

The The Pennsylvania State University is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State became the state’s only land-grant university in 1863. Today, Penn State is a major research university which conducts teaching, research, and public service. Its instructional mission includes undergraduate, graduate, professional and continuing education offered through resident instruction and online delivery. In addition to its land-grant designation, it also participates in the sea-grant, space-grant, and sun-grant research consortia; it is one of only four such universities (along with Cornell University, Oregon State University, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa). Its University Park campus, which is the largest and serves as the administrative hub, lies within the Borough of State College and College Township. It has two law schools: Penn State Law, on the school’s University Park campus, and Dickinson Law, in Carlisle. The College of Medicine is in Hershey. Penn State is one university that is geographically distributed throughout Pennsylvania. There are 19 commonwealth campuses and 5 special mission campuses located across the state. The University Park campus has been labeled one of the “Public Ivies,” a publicly funded university considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League.
The Pennsylvania State University is a member of The Association of American Universities an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education.

Annual enrollment at the University Park campus totals more than 46,800 graduate and undergraduate students, making it one of the largest universities in the United States. It has the world’s largest dues-paying alumni association. The university offers more than 160 majors among all its campuses.

Annually, the university hosts the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (THON), which is the world’s largest student-run philanthropy. This event is held at the Bryce Jordan Center on the University Park campus. The university’s athletics teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Penn State Nittany Lions, competing in the Big Ten Conference for most sports. Penn State students, alumni, faculty and coaches have received a total of 54 Olympic medals.

Early years

The school was sponsored by the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society and founded as a degree-granting institution on February 22, 1855, by Pennsylvania’s state legislature as the Farmers’ High School of Pennsylvania. The use of “college” or “university” was avoided because of local prejudice against such institutions as being impractical in their courses of study. Centre County, Pennsylvania, became the home of the new school when James Irvin of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, donated 200 acres (0.8 km2) of land – the first of 10,101 acres (41 km^2) the school would eventually acquire. In 1862, the school’s name was changed to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, and with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, Pennsylvania selected the school in 1863 to be the state’s sole land-grant college. The school’s name changed to the Pennsylvania State College in 1874; enrollment fell to 64 undergraduates the following year as the school tried to balance purely agricultural studies with a more classic education.

George W. Atherton became president of the school in 1882, and broadened the curriculum. Shortly after he introduced engineering studies, Penn State became one of the ten largest engineering schools in the nation. Atherton also expanded the liberal arts and agriculture programs, for which the school began receiving regular appropriations from the state in 1887. A major road in State College has been named in Atherton’s honor. Additionally, Penn State’s Atherton Hall, a well-furnished and centrally located residence hall, is named not after George Atherton himself, but after his wife, Frances Washburn Atherton. His grave is in front of Schwab Auditorium near Old Main, marked by an engraved marble block in front of his statue.

Early 20th century

In the years that followed, Penn State grew significantly, becoming the state’s largest grantor of baccalaureate degrees and reaching an enrollment of 5,000 in 1936. Around that time, a system of commonwealth campuses was started by President Ralph Dorn Hetzel to provide an alternative for Depression-era students who were economically unable to leave home to attend college.

In 1953, President Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, sought and won permission to elevate the school to university status as The Pennsylvania State University. Under his successor Eric A. Walker (1956–1970), the university acquired hundreds of acres of surrounding land, and enrollment nearly tripled. In addition, in 1967, the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, a college of medicine and hospital, was established in Hershey with a $50 million gift from the Hershey Trust Company.

Modern era

In the 1970s, the university became a state-related institution. As such, it now belongs to the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. In 1975, the lyrics in Penn State’s alma mater song were revised to be gender-neutral in honor of International Women’s Year; the revised lyrics were taken from the posthumously-published autobiography of the writer of the original lyrics, Fred Lewis Pattee, and Professor Patricia Farrell acted as a spokesperson for those who wanted the change.

In 1989, the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport joined ranks with the university, and in 2000, so did the Dickinson School of Law. The university is now the largest in Pennsylvania. To offset the lack of funding due to the limited growth in state appropriations to Penn State, the university has concentrated its efforts on philanthropy.

Research

Penn State is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. Over 10,000 students are enrolled in the university’s graduate school (including the law and medical schools), and over 70,000 degrees have been awarded since the school was founded in 1922.

Penn State’s research and development expenditure has been on the rise in recent years. For fiscal year 2013, according to institutional rankings of total research expenditures for science and engineering released by the National Science Foundation , Penn State stood second in the nation, behind only Johns Hopkins University and tied with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , in the number of fields in which it is ranked in the top ten. Overall, Penn State ranked 17th nationally in total research expenditures across the board. In 12 individual fields, however, the university achieved rankings in the top ten nationally. The fields and sub-fields in which Penn State ranked in the top ten are materials (1st), psychology (2nd), mechanical engineering (3rd), sociology (3rd), electrical engineering (4th), total engineering (5th), aerospace engineering (8th), computer science (8th), agricultural sciences (8th), civil engineering (9th), atmospheric sciences (9th), and earth sciences (9th). Moreover, in eleven of these fields, the university has repeated top-ten status every year since at least 2008. For fiscal year 2011, the National Science Foundation reported that Penn State had spent $794.846 million on R&D and ranked 15th among U.S. universities and colleges in R&D spending.

For the 2008–2009 fiscal year, Penn State was ranked ninth among U.S. universities by the National Science Foundation, with $753 million in research and development spending for science and engineering. During the 2015–2016 fiscal year, Penn State received $836 million in research expenditures.

The Applied Research Lab (ARL), located near the University Park campus, has been a research partner with the Department of Defense since 1945 and conducts research primarily in support of the United States Navy. It is the largest component of Penn State’s research efforts statewide, with over 1,000 researchers and other staff members.

The Materials Research Institute was created to coordinate the highly diverse and growing materials activities across Penn State’s University Park campus. With more than 200 faculty in 15 departments, 4 colleges, and 2 Department of Defense research laboratories, MRI was designed to break down the academic walls that traditionally divide disciplines and enable faculty to collaborate across departmental and even college boundaries. MRI has become a model for this interdisciplinary approach to research, both within and outside the university. Dr. Richard E. Tressler was an international leader in the development of high-temperature materials. He pioneered high-temperature fiber testing and use, advanced instrumentation and test methodologies for thermostructural materials, and design and performance verification of ceramics and composites in high-temperature aerospace, industrial, and energy applications. He was founding director of the Center for Advanced Materials (CAM), which supported many faculty and students from the College of Earth and Mineral Science, the Eberly College of Science, the College of Engineering, the Materials Research Laboratory and the Applied Research Laboratories at Penn State on high-temperature materials. His vision for Interdisciplinary research played a key role in creating the Materials Research Institute, and the establishment of Penn State as an acknowledged leader among major universities in materials education and research.

The university was one of the founding members of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), a partnership that includes 17 research-led universities in the United States, Asia, and Europe. The network provides funding, facilitates collaboration between universities, and coordinates exchanges of faculty members and graduate students among institutions. Former Penn State president Graham Spanier is a former vice-chair of the WUN.

The Pennsylvania State University Libraries were ranked 14th among research libraries in North America in the 2003–2004 survey released by The Chronicle of Higher Education. The university’s library system began with a 1,500-book library in Old Main. In 2009, its holdings had grown to 5.2 million volumes, in addition to 500,000 maps, five million microforms, and 180,000 films and videos.

The university’s College of Information Sciences and Technology is the home of CiteSeerX, an open-access repository and search engine for scholarly publications. The university is also the host to the Radiation Science & Engineering Center, which houses the oldest operating university research reactor. Additionally, University Park houses the Graduate Program in Acoustics, the only freestanding acoustics program in the United States. The university also houses the Center for Medieval Studies, a program that was founded to research and study the European Middle Ages, and the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), one of the first centers established to research postsecondary education.

The The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, U Manchester part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK).

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope.

From The University of Manchester (UK) and The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia [Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía] CSIC (ES) : “The start of the birth of planets in a binary star system observed”

From The University of Manchester (UK)

and

The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia [Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía] CSIC (ES)

The start of the birth of planets in a binary star system observed.

Artist’s impression of a binary protostar. Credit: L. Calçada/The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral][Europaiche Sûdsternwarte] (EU)(CL).

10 March, 2022

Astronomers have observed primordial material that may be giving birth to three planetary systems around a binary star in unprecedented detail.

Bringing together three decades of study, an international group of scientists have observed a pair of stars orbiting each other, to reveal that these stars are surrounded by disks of gas and dust. Research published today in The Astrophysical Journal, shows the material within the newly discovered disks could be the beginnings of new planet systems which in the future orbit the binary stars.

Using the Very Large Array (VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), the scientific group has studied the binary star SVS 13, still in its embryonic phase.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)Karl G Jansky Very Large Array located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twenty-eight 25-meter radio telescopes.

The European Southern Observatory [La Observatorio Europeo Austral] [Observatoire européen austral][Europäische Südsternwarte](EU)(CL)/National Radio Astronomy Observatory(US)/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan(JP) ALMA Observatory (CL).

This work has provided the best description available so far on a binary system in formation.

Models of planet formation suggest that planets form by the slow aggregation of ice and dust particles in protoplanetary disks around forming stars. Usually these models consider only single stars, such as the Sun. However, most stars form binary systems, in which two stars rotate around a common centre. Very little is yet known about how planets are born around these important twin star systems, in which the gravitational interaction between the two stars plays an essential role.

“Our results have revealed that each star has a disk of gas and dust around it and that, in addition, a larger disk is forming around both stars,” says Ana Karla Díaz-Rodríguez, a researcher at The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia [Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía] – CSIC (ES) and The UK ALMA Regional Centre (UK-ARC) at The University of Manchester, who leads the work.

“This outer disk shows a spiral structure that is feeding matter into the individual disks, and in all of them planetary systems could form in the future. This is clear evidence for the presence of disks around both stars and the existence of a common disk in a binary system.”

The binary system SVS 13, consisting of two stellar embryos with a total mass similar to that of the Sun, is relatively close to us, about 980 light-years away in the Perseus molecular cloud allowing its detailed study. The two stars in the system are very close to each other, with a distance of only about ninety times that between the Earth and the Sun.

The work has made it possible to study the composition of gas, dust and ionized matter in the system. In addition, nearly thirty different molecules have been identified around both protostars, including thirteen complex organic molecules precursors of life (seven of them detected for the first time in this system). “This means that when planets begin to form around these two suns, the building blocks of life will be there,” says Ana Karla Díaz-Rodríguez (IAA-CSIC / UK-ARC).

The scientific team has used the observations of SVS 13 obtained by the VLA over thirty years, together with new data from ALMA, and has followed the motion of both stars over this period, which has allowed their orbit to be traced, as well as the geometry and orientation of the system, along with many fundamental parameters, such as the mass of the protostars, the mass of the disks, and their temperature. Gary Fuller of The University of Manchester, a collaborator on the project, says: “This work shows how careful, systematic studies of young stars can provide a remarkably detailed view of their structure and properties.“

“At the IAA we began studying this system twenty-five years ago. We were surprised when we discovered that SVS 13 was a radio binary, because only one star is seen in the optical. Normally, stellar embryos are detected in radio, but they only become visible at the end of the gestation process. It was very strange to discover a pair of twin stars where one of them seemed to have evolved much faster than the other. We designed several experiments to get more details and to find out if in such a case either of the stars could form planets. Now we have seen that both stars are very young, and that both can form planets,” says Guillem Anglada, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) who is coordinating the studies of SVS 13.

SVS 13 has generated much debate in the scientific literature, as some studies consider it to be extremely young and others consider it to be in a later stage. This new study, probably the most complete study of a binary star system in formation, not only sheds light on the nature of the two protostars and their environment, but also provides crucial parameters for testing numerical simulations of the early stages of binary and multiple system formation.

See the full article here .

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Welcome to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA). The IAA is an institute of The Spanish National Research Council[Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (ES). The activities of the IAA (CSIC) are related to research in the field of Astrophysics and the development of instruments for telescopes and space vehicles. These webpages are intended to present our activities as well as useful information both for other professional institutions devoted to astrophysics research as well as for those interested in learning something more about the IAA and astrophysics in general.

From the front page on, an explanation is provided of the structure and organization of the IAA, followed by general information concerning our technological and scientific research in addition to all the activities we consider of general interest.

The pages of each department provide basic information: the staff, research lines, projects under way and research results. The navigator will also find more specific and varied information on each of the individual pages of the IAA staff.

Introduction
The IAA has as its general scientific objective to help increase the bulk of knowledge about our universe, from the closest at hand, our solar system, to an overall scale of the entire universe, improving descriptions and analysing the physical processes that take place there. The nature of this aim demands a multi-disciplinary approach, requiring a combination of theory, observation and technology in different areas of physics and engineering. Although the IAA is a centre for pursuing basic science, we are aware of the role that astrophysics plays as a user and producer of new technologies.

To achieve our overarching objective, different scientific programmes are being undertaken with specific aims and timetables, encompassing four large areas of astrophysics: the solar system; star formation, structure and evolution; galaxy structure and evolution; and cosmology. Basic science has been and continues to be the motor for training scientific and technical staff, as well as for stimulating the development of other disciplines. The history of the IAA clearly depicts the observational function of the centre.

The telescopes installed in the Observatorio de Sierra Nevada (OSN), reflect a scientific policy with the clear objective of ensuring continued access to observational means to undertake far-reaching scientific projects.

IAA Observatorio de Sierra Nevada

This fact adds singularity to the centre and at the same time offers the challenge and incentive for research at the IAA. The design and construction of instruments for the OSN, as well as others to be carried in special space vehicles, not only serve as support for basic research by the different teams of the IAA, but also represent activity of prime importance for the appropriate combination of research and development.

The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia [Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, IAA-CSIC] is a research institute funded by the High Council of Scientific Research of the Spanish government Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), and is located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. IAA activities are related to research in the field of astrophysics, and instrument development both for ground-based telescopes and for space missions. Scientific research at the Institute covers the solar system, star formation, stellar structure and evolution, galaxy formation and evolution and cosmology. The IAA was created as a CSIC research institute in July 1975. Presently, the IAA operates the Sierra Nevada Observatory, and (jointly with the also the The MPG Institute for Astronomy [MPG Institut für Astronomie](DE)) the Calar Alto Observatory.

Calar Alto Astronomical Observatory 3.5 meter Telescope, located in Almería province in Spain on Calar Alto, a 2,168-meter-high (7,113 ft) mountain in Sierra de Los Filabres(ES)
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía is divided in the following departments, each with an (incomplete) outline of research avenues and groups:

Department of Extragalactic Astronomy
Violent Stellar Formation Group
AMIGA Group (Analysis of the interstellar Medium of Isolated Galaxies)
Department of Stellar Physics
Department of Radio Astronomy and Galactic Structure
Stellar Systems Group
Department of Solar System

The technological needs of IAA’s research groups are fulfilled by the Instrumental and Technological Developments Unit

The University of Manchester (UK) is a public research university in the city of Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (renamed in 1966, est. 1956 as Manchester College of Science and Technology) which had its ultimate origins in the Mechanics’ Institute established in the city in 1824 and the Victoria University of Manchester founded by charter in 1904 after the dissolution of the federal Victoria University (which also had members in Leeds and Liverpool), but originating in Owens College, founded in Manchester in 1851. The University of Manchester is regarded as a red brick university, and was a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. It formed a constituent part of the federal Victoria University between 1880, when it received its royal charter, and 1903–1904, when it was dissolved.

The University of Manchester is ranked 33rd in the world by QS World University Rankings 2015-16. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester is ranked 41st in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities which they recruited from, Manchester placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell University, The University of Pennsylvania and The London School of Economics (UK) . It is ranked joint 56th in the world and 18th in Europe in the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry to the University of Manchester than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every place available. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) which includes the Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

Jodrell Bank campus, U Manchester part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester (UK).

U Manchester Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope.