Experts in the News

Although it’s understood that water ice exists below the lunar regolith (broken rock and dust), scientists don’t yet know whether surface ice frost covers the floors inside cold, dark craters. NASA is sending Lunar Flashlight, a small satellite (or SmallSat) no larger than a briefcase to find out. The mission, which will use lasers to shed light on those dark craters, will launch in mid-November aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Lunar Flashlight will be operated by Georgia Tech with its data set to be studied by the REVEALS (Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces) Lab, a collaborative effort involving students and researchers from the Colleges of Sciences and Engineering. Thomas Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and an adjunct professor in the School of Physics, is the principal investigator with REVEALS.

October is National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month, and The Able Channel is celebrating by raising awareness about the importance of work for those living and working with disability. Hosted by Paralympic Gold Medal-winning swimmer Mallory Weggeman, "Together We Are Able" showcases the stories of 10 Americans who have redefined perceptions of what the word able is all about. College of Sciences Advisory Board member Paul S. Goggin (Physics 1991, M.S. Atmospheric Sciences 1994) is the founder and chief operating officer of The Able Channel. "Together We Are Able" will air on NBC, CBS, Fox, and other channels, and on The Able Channel's streaming service. 

In a physics lab in Amsterdam, there’s a wheel that can spontaneously roll uphill by wiggling. This “odd wheel” looks simple: just six small motors linked together by plastic arms and rubber bands to form a ring about 6 inches in diameter. When the motors are powered on, it starts writhing, executing complicated squashing and stretching motions and occasionally flinging itself into the air, all the while slowly making its way up a bumpy foam ramp. The odd wheel’s unorthodox mode of travel exemplifies a recent trend: Physicists are finding ways to get useful collective behavior to spontaneously emerge in robots assembled from simple parts that obey simple rules. Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics (who did not work on the odd wheel study), uses the term "robophysics" to describe this latest trend in robotics.

NASA is preparing to enter a new space age from Florida's space coast, and a scientist in Georgia is helping newly tapped Artemis astronauts step onto the moon with next-generation suits. Thom Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and the School of Physics, is a co-founder of the Center for Space Technology and Research. Orlando has been working with NASA to design the space suits that future astronauts will wear as they walk on the lunar surface.

Turbulence plays a key role in our daily lives, making for bumpy plane rides, affecting weather and climate, limiting the fuel efficiency of the cars we drive, and impacting clean energy technologies. Yet, scientists and engineers have puzzled at ways to predict and alter turbulent fluid flows, and it has long remained one of the most challenging problems in science and engineering. Now, physicists from the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated — numerically and experimentally — that turbulence can be understood and quantified with the help of a relatively small set of special solutions to the governing equations of fluid dynamics that can be precomputed for a particular geometry, once and for all. The research by Roman Grigoriev and Michael Schatz, professors in the School of Physics, was also covered in ScienceDaily.