News

Read the latest news from the Department of Physics

Accolades

Physicist Receives DOE Funding for Fusion Projects

UT Austin researcher Saeid Houshmandyar has been awarded approximately $900,000 by the DOE for fusion and plasma research over three years. The funding will support...

Saeid Houshmandyar

Features

Lilienfeld Prize Winner Katherine Freese Researches Dark Matter

The winner of the 2019 Lilienfeld Prize, given annually by the American Physical Society for outstanding contributions in physics, develops theories about dark matter and what happened at the start of the universe.

Portrait of a woman

Research

5 Tips to Get the Most Out of Four Years of Undergrad Research

We asked graduating seniors from across the college to share their best tips for research success.

Three students in blue lab coats and goggles gather around a computer screen

Podcast

A Love Letter from Texas Scientists to the Periodic Table

We're celebrating the 150th anniversary of the periodic table. Join us as we tour the cosmos, from the microscopic to the telescopic, with four scientists studying the role of four elements—zinc, oxygen, palladium and gold—in life, the universe and everything.

A series of cupcakes arranged to look like the periodic table

Podcast

All in the (Scientific) Family

Scientists often talk about the people who mentored them, and the students and postdocs they supervise, in ways that sound like a family.

A casual photo of college students and faculty sitting on a living room floor

Podcast

Bringing Real Science to the Big Screen

Scientist Kip Thorne talks with his former graduate student Bill Press about what it's like to work on a major Hollywood film.

An astronaut walks across a frozen, alien landscape

Research

New Material Might Lead to Higher Capacity Hard Drives

Researchers from the U.S. and Japan have demonstrated that they can store and retrieve information magnetically in a new class of materials.

Computer hard drive

UT News

Newly Identified Gravitational Waves Help Pinpoint Black Hole

The scientists looking for gravitational waves reported that last year they observed four additional ripples in space-time. During about a nine-month period, scientists including UT Austins Aaron Zimmerman made the observation with the National Science Foundation’s LIGO collaboration.

Artists rendition of two black holes about to collide in space

Features

Visualizing Science 2018: Beauty and Inspiration in College Research

Winners of the 2018 Visualizing Science contest include images of nanomaterials, the connection between chaos and electronics and a glimpse into the aural lives of the elderly.

A pseudocolored transmission electron micrograph of nanodroplets filled with paramagnetic metals and perfluorocarbon materials.