News: Features

Read the latest news from the Department of Physics

Features

Physics Alum a Lead on Gravitational Waves Discovery

UT Austin alumnus David Reitze talks about an event that happened in September or more than a billion years ago, depending on how you look at it.

An artist's rendition showing a person looking out at four celestial bodies

Features

Testing General Relativity

Scientists from UT Austin once traveled to the Sahara Desert to observe a rare eclipse and used computers to model ripples in space and time unleashed by the mergers of black holes

A man stands on a ladder outside a white hut in the desert

Features

Can General Relativity, at 100, Withstand Some Holes?

Answering some of the biggest questions in astrophysics—for example, about black holes and the origin of the universe—might require overhauling general relativity.

Illustration of a black hole

Features

2015 Summer Blockbusters: Meet Our Science Truth Detector

With summer movie season in full swing, cinema-goers are leaving theaters with one big question in mind: “Wait, could that really happen?”

Cartoon characters representing different feelings stand around a control console

Features

Researchers Tackle the Dark Side of Moore's Law

To mark the 50th Anniversary of Moore's Law, we'll explore how much computing power has improved and how much farther it can go.

Illustration of Moore's Law

Features

Peter Onyisi is Having a Smashing Time Hunting Particles

After the excitement of discovering the Higgs boson, what comes next for particle physics?

A man stands with arms crossed in front of a chalk board with mathematical equations

Features

Visualizing Science 2014: Beautiful Images From College Research

This past spring, we asked faculty, staff and students in the College of Natural Sciences community to send us images that celebrated the extraordinary beauty of science and the scientific process. We were looking for that moment where science and art collide and we succeeded.

Polarized light microscopy image of a copepod