Department of Physics and Astronomy
The Department of Physics and Astronomy has a rich and long history dating back to the latter part of the 19th century. Our faculty and students are exploring nature at all length scales, from the subatomic (quarks and gluons) to the macroscopic (black holes and dark energy), and everything in between (atomic and biological systems).
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Hot, Young Supernova Remnant! JWST Observations of Cas A Challenge Scientists
SETI LIVE — When a star at its life's end explodes, a debris cloud expands away from the now-dead star. The debris forms intricate and amazing structures in the expanding cloud and can cause the formation of a variety of molecules. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have collected information regarding Cassiopeia A (Cas A), the youngest known supernova remnant in the Milky Way. The observations shed light on how molecules and dust form and are destroyed in the aftermath of an explosion. These results suggest that supernovae, like Cas A, are key sources of the dust observed in ancient galaxies. A recent paper highlights the findings of this work, including the temperatures measured and molecules formed. Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center Simon Steel chats with lead author Jeonghee Rho and co-authors Danny Milisavljevic and Ilse De Looze about the data collected and what it means for dust formation in the universe.
Can Space and Time Exist as Two Shapes at Once? Mind-Bending Experiments Aim to Find Out
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN —Proposed experiments will search for signs that spacetime is quantum and can exist in a superposition of multiple shapes at once. Physicists proposed an experiment in 1974. The following year, Roberto Colella and Albert W. Overhauser, both at Purdue University, collaborated with Samuel A. Werner, then a staff scientist at Ford Motor Company, and successfully observed a predicted fringe pattern, directly demonstrating the influence of gravity on the quantum behavior of particles, to the great excitement of many scientists.
These Levitating Nanodiamonds Are the World’s Smallest Disco Balls
GIZMODO — Somewhere in the quantum realm, a teeny, tiny rave is afoot. Researchers at Purdue created ultra-small levitating diamonds, with diameters the size of 350 strands of human DNA, that reflect light like a disco ball as they spin over a billion times per minute.
Purdue physicists throw world’s smallest disco party
Physicists at Purdue are throwing the world’s smallest disco party. The disco ball itself is a fluorescent nanodiamond, which they have levitated and spun at incredibly high speeds. The fluorescent diamond emits and scatters multicolor lights in different directions as it rotates. The party continues as they study the effects of fast rotation on the spin qubits within their system and are able to observe the Berry phase. The team, led by Tongcang Li, professor of Physics and Astronomy and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, published their results in Nature Communications. Reviewers of the publication described this work as “arguably a groundbreaking moment for the study of rotating quantum systems and levitodynamics” and “a new milestone for the levitated optomechanics community.”
Cracking binary mysteries: astrophysicists unify codes
An international team of astrophysicists recently met at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, which hosted a several months long program on binary accretion. At this meeting, a daunting question was posed: if scientists ran different simulation codes that are common to the industry for binary systems, would all yield the same results? This international team agreed to see this quest through and ran all eleven codes on the same problem and posted their findings in the American Astronomical Society. The publication’s lead author is Paul Duffell, assistant professor at the Purdue University Department of Physics and Astronomy and host of The Astrophysics Podcast.