Atlanta Magazine talks to School of Physics Professor and Director of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Deirdre Shoemaker and School of Physics Associate Professor Laura Cadonati, who were part of the international team that confirmed in February 2016 the existence of gravitational waves. These elusive cosmic phenomena were first predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Students and alumni are noted for their strides in science, technology and entrepreneurship. Among them is School of Physics Ph.D. candidate Karan Jani.
Georgia Tech researchers explain how frogs maintain their grip on their prey during the speedy attacks with their prehensile tongues. The study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, was conducted by mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Alexis Noel under the guidance of David Hu, a professor of mechanical engineering and of biology and an adjunct professor of physics.
It's not every day that a diving vacation paves the way for a possible technological innovation, much less one that involves earwax. Yet, that's precisely what happened for Alexis Noel. The mechanical engineering PhD candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology described her scuba diving trip, her boyfriend’s subsequent water-clogged ear, and the culprit—earwax—that kept the water trapped behind his eardrum to her professor, David Hu.
Supermassive black holes sit at the center of nearly every massive galaxy situated in the universe. Scientists don’t know how supermassive black holes form, but a new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, illustrates a theory crazy enough to perhaps work. The running hypothesis is that black holes are born out of the collapse of a star, which can eventually suck up enough mass that they grow into supermassive black holes (SBHs).
New research clarifies how toroidal droplets—which initially take the shape of a donut—evolve into spherical droplets by collapsing into themselves or breaking up into smaller droplets. Work with droplets has implications for the life sciences, and could improve industrial processes....“Surface tension drives the evolution of the droplets,” says Alexandros Fragkopoulos, a PhD candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology.
More than ten years ago, astronomers made a discovery that has puzzled them ever since – supermassive black holes appeared to have popped up soon after the start of the Universe. It is thought to take billions of years for supermassive black holes to form, but at least 20 of them were spotted at the dawn of the Universe, just 800 million years after the Big Bang. A team of researchers from Dublin City University, Columbia University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Helsinki, have now used computer simulations to attempt to solve the mystery. The results say a black hole can grow quickly
It’s no secret that supermassive black holes are heartless beasts: These objects of immense gravity that let nothing, not even light escape, have fascinated astronomers since the early 20th century.
Bright radiation emitted by neighboring galaxies likely fueled the rapid growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe, a new study shows. John Wise, an associate professor in the School of Physics, is a co-author of the study.
