Physics | Penn Today

jupiter and saturn visible at dusk just above the horizon of a dark mountain landscape

A rare celestial treat on the winter solstice

Four tips and takeaways from astronomer Cullen Blake on the upcoming alignment of Jupiter and Saturn and how to best catch a glimpse of the “great conjunction.”

Close-up headshots of two people. The person on the left wears a suit and tie, the one on the right wears a plaid button-down shirt.

Two Penn faculty named 2020 AAAS Fellows

Qi Long and E. Michael Ostap of the Perelman School of Medicine are among a cohort of 489 distinguished scientists recognized with the honor from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

a person wearing darkened glasses adjusting lenses on an optics table

First-ever evidence of exotic particles in cobalt monosilicide

The discovery of fourfold topological quasiparticles in this metallic alloy could be used to engineer topological materials with unique and controllable properties in the future.

two middle school-age students work on a robotics project.

Penn Engineering and Steppingstone Scholars launch a STEM equity and innovation lab

Penn Engineering and Steppingstone will begin developing a new blended AP Computer Science course for the fall 2021 semester, in which engineering students will create online content modules to supplement high school classroom instruction.

From rocks to icebergs, the natural world tends to break into cubes

Douglas Jerolmack of the School of Arts & Sciences commented on his research, which finds that when natural structures break apart, they tend to fragment into cube-like shapes. He said the findings could help geologists calculate the size of rocks breaking off cliff faces, among other applications.

Plato was right. Earth is made, on average, of cubes

The ancient Greek philosopher was on to something, the School of Arts & Sciences’ Douglas Jerolmack and colleagues found.

a simulated view of the Milky Way galaxy

New stellar stream, born outside the Milky Way, discovered with machine learning

Finding this new stellar stream, named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of night, was made possible using machine learning tools and simulations of data collected by the Gaia space observatory.

the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in the foreground and the desert and mountains of chile in the background

New view of nature’s oldest light adds fresh twist to debate over universe’s age

Observations by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, and reveals how fast the cosmos is expanding.

researching working in simons observatory

Additional challenges in bringing research online

As research on campus slowly restarts, those whose work requires field surveys, large-scale collaborations, or travel face additional challenges in bringing their research back online.

a graph showing connected circles for characters in king lear, othello, and macbeth

What do ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ ‘Macbeth,’ and a list of Facebook friends all have in common?

To an English scholar or avid reader, the Shakespeare Canon represents some of the greatest literary works of the English language. To a network scientist, Shakespeare’s 37 plays and the 884,421 words they contain also represent a massively complex communication network.

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