Penn Cosmologists Join Euclid Space Telescope Mission

PHILADELPHIA — NASA has nominated three U.S. science teams to participate in the European Space Agency's planned Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to probe the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter and scheduled to launch in 2020.

Evan Lerner

Penn Researchers Help Show That Blood Plasma Is Thicker Than Water

PHILADELPHIA — For decades, researchers thought that blood plasma behaved like water. But, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania and Saarland University in Germany, plasma is more elastic and viscous than water, and, like ketchup, its flow properties depend on the pressure it is under.

Evan Lerner

Penn cosmologists join new space telescope mission

Penn has long played a leadership role in the search for two of the most elusive phenomena in astronomy: dark matter and dark energy. The two related concepts try to explain the apparently “missing” mass of the universe, and why the universe’s expansion is accelerating, rather than slowing down due to gravity. 

Evan Lerner

Penn Researchers Use DNA to Make Crystals That Can Switch Configurations

PHILADELPHIA — Beyond serving as the backbone of modern biology, DNA has come to be a molecule of great interest to engineers. That a DNA sequence will naturally bind only with a complementary sequence could make it part of a configurable, and potentially programmable, building material.   

Evan Lerner

Penn Research Shows Mechanism Behind Wear at the Atomic Scale

PHILADELPHIA — Wear is a fact of life. As surfaces rub against one another, they break down and lose their original shape. With less material to start with and functionality that often depends critically on shape and surface structure, wear affects nanoscale objects more strongly than it does their macroscale counterparts.

Evan Lerner