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Penn ATLAS shares 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
Members of the Penn ATLAS team and others in front of the inner detector at the Large Hadron Collider.

Members of the Penn ATLAS team and others in front of the inner detector of ATLAS experiment.

(Image: ©CERN/Maximilien Brice)

Penn ATLAS shares 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

The team, which includes Joseph Kroll, Evelyn Thomson, Elliot Lipeles, Dylan Rankin, and Brig Williams from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is part of an expansive collaboration studying high-energy collisions from the Large Hadron Collider.

Michele W. Berger

2 min. read

New high-definition pictures of the early universe
Part of the installation of a telescope.

(Image courtesy of ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck)

New high-definition pictures of the early universe

Research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration has led to the clearest and most precise images yet of the universe’s infancy—the cosmic microwave background radiation that was visible only 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

8 min. read

A less clumpy, more complex universe?
Dark energy telescope with star trails

A less clumpy, more complex universe?

Researchers combined cosmological data from two major surveys of the universe’s evolutionary history and found that it may have become “messier and complicated” than expected in recent years.
Takeaways: The new mini moon
Visualization of 2024PT5's orbit around the sun temporarily joining Earth's.

On Sunday, Sept. 29, Earth welcomed 2024 PT5, a “mini-moon” temporarily captured by the planet’s orbit that’s set to depart on Monday, Nov. 25.

(Image: Courtesy of NASA/JPL)

Takeaways: The new mini moon

Last month Earth welcomed a visitor known as 2024 PT5. To learn more about this celestial guest, Penn Today caught up with two astronomers in the School of Arts & Sciences, Gary Bernstein and Bhuvnesh Jain.
What’s That? The Rittenhouse Orrery
John Pollack standing in front of Rittenhouse Orrery

Penn Libraries curator John Pollack with the Rittenhouse Orrery.

nocred

What’s That? The Rittenhouse Orrery

The Rittenhouse Orrery is a nearly intact 18th-century mechanical model of the solar system, demonstrating the motions of the planets and their satellites around the sun, built by astronomer David Rittenhouse.
Researchers upend theory about the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy
Visualization of a ‘wrinkly’ halo of stars around the Milky Way.

This image visualizes the Milky Way and its surrounding “halo” of stars. Most stars in the Milky Way lie in the disc (like the Sun, for example), but stars from past collisions end up in the halo, a large “cloud” of stars that extends outwards in all directions. These halo stars have been enhanced in this image, but in reality would be very dim compared to the disc. The halo appears messy and “wrinkly” here, a sign that a merger has occurred relatively recently.

(Image: Halo stars: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, T Donlon et al. 2024; Background Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar)

Researchers upend theory about the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy

New findings by Robyn Sanderson and collaborators suggest galaxy’s last major collision was billions of years later than previously thought.
Total solar eclipse
the solar eclipse surrounded by its corona

Sliski's composite image of the solar eclipse, with plumes located above and below the poles of the stars, red prominences located near the edge of the sun (at 11 and 8 o'clock), and with one extensions each to the east and west of the solar disc. This data will be compared to predictive models to better refine the current understanding of the sun (Image credit: David Sliski). 

Total solar eclipse

Gary Bernstein and Bhuvnesh Jain speak with Penn Today about the significance of the coming total eclipse.
Once a spy satellite, now a telescope with an eye on the cosmos
spy satellite in lab with blue background

(On homepage) Engineers at Ball Aerospace, one of Roman’s industrial partners, installed and aligned the element wheel assembly into the observatory’s Wide Field Instrument. The assembly will help Roman solve some of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics. When light bounces off and is concentrated by the main and secondary mirrors of Roman, it will move through a component called the element wheel. After being focused and filtered, this light will hit a big array of sensors that captures the light to form an image. Depending on their research needs, astronomers can use special science filters to pick out certain types of light for their studies.

(Image: Courtesy of Ball Aerospace)

Once a spy satellite, now a telescope with an eye on the cosmos

Researchers from Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences are part of a collaboration to develop Hubble’s wide-eyed cousin, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.