“How Black Hole Spectroscopy Can Put General Relativity to the Test,” an article by Prof. Emanuele Berti and graduate students Mark Ho-Yeuk Cheung and Sophia Yi now appears in Physics Today. It reveals how next-generation gravitational-wave detectors should enable researchers to evaluate Einstein’s predictions about the nonlinear spacetime oscillations that spread from merging black holes.
News & Announcements Archive
Breakthrough Prize for LHC Collaborators Including Andrei Gritsan, Petar Makisomovic & Morris Swartz
The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics has been awarded co-authors of publications based on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider data at the experimental collaborations ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. Andrei Gritsan, Petar Makisomovic and Morris Swartz are among the co-authors who are recipients of the Prize.
Bingjie Wang (PhD ’21) Receives Hubble Fellowship
Bingjie Wang, who earned her PhD in the department working with Tim Heckman, has received a NASA Hubble Fellowship which supports promising postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research which contributes to NASA Astrophysics. As a Hubble Fellow, Bingjie will explore the nature of extremely compact red sources and the stochasticity in star formation rate.
William Balmer Leads Research Providing First Direct Images of Carbon Dioxide Outside Solar System
PhD candidate William Balmer employed the James Webb Space Telescope in his research that has captured the first direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet outside the solar system.
JHU Physics Fair returns to Bloomberg Center for Physics & Astronomy April 26, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
After a hiatus of several years, the William H. Miller III Department of Physics & Astronomy is excited to announce the revival of the Physics Fair! Join us on Saturday, April 26 from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for a day of fun, interactive exhibits and activities that explore the fascinating world of physics.
Music for the Stars: Thursday, 2/27, 7:30 PM, FREE, Bloomberg Center Lobby
In collaboration with composers from the Peabody Composition department, students from the vocal studio of Prof. Ah Young Hong, and Professor Brice Ménard, Music of the Stars is a performance that features new compositions for voice inspired by images from the James Webb space telescope. See the live performance at 7:30 on Thursday, 2/27, in the lobby of Bloomberg Center for Physics & Astronomy.
Marco Chiaberge Leads Study That Offers Solution for Cartilage Damage in Long Space Journeys
By studying mice, Research Scientist Marco Chiaberge postulates that jumping workouts could help astronauts on the moon and Mars
Jun Zhang Named a 2025 Sloan Research Fellow
Assistant Professor Yaojun (Jun) Zhang has been selected by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as one of 126 scholars that represent the most promising early-career scientists working today. The award for being named a Sloan Research Fellow in 2025 is $75,000, which may be spent over a two-year term on any expense supportive of research.
Emanuele Berti Explains the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to Gizmodo
Professor Emanuele Berti helps Gizmodo readers better understand the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) in the new article titled “LISA: What the Revolutionary Gravitational Wave Observatory Will Actually See”
Sabti, Kamionkowski, and Muñoz Paper Chosen for Physical Review Letter Collection of the Year 2024
Postdoctoral Fellow Nashwan Sabti, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Marc Kamionkowski, and former graduate student in the department Julian Munoz co-authored an article titled “Insights from HST into Ultramassive Galaxies and Early-Universe Cosmology” for Physical Review Letters that has been chosen as one of 50 articles in the Physical Review Letter Collection of the Year 2024.