Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins
University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools,
the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to
the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins
communications offices.
Legendary investor and philanthropist William H. “Bill” Miller III has made a lead gift of $50 million in a combined $75 million philanthropic effort to support Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Miller’s $50 million commitment will fund endowed professorships, postdoctoral fellowships, and graduate research, and will provide ongoing support for research infrastructure. His gift also served as the impetus for two anonymous donors to support the department as well, expanding to $75 million the funding to advance key areas of physics research.
December 16, 2021 Tags: astronomy, Bill Miller, Johns Hopkins University, physics, William H. “Bill” Miller III, William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy
| Category: Fundraising, Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Physics and Astronomy
In an open access paper published in Science Advances, Johns Hopkins physicists and colleagues at Rice University, the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), present experimental evidence of naturally occurring quantum criticality in a material.
May 24, 2021 Tags: Institute for Quantum Matter, Johns Hopkins University, physics, quantum materials, quantum technology
| Category: Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, Technology, Uncategorized
New Johns Hopkins University simulations offer an intriguing look into Saturn’s interior, suggesting that a thick layer of helium rain influences the planet’s magnetic field.
May 5, 2021 Tags: Earth Science, NASA, physics, planetary science, Saturn
| Category: Earth Science, Physics and Astronomy, Uncategorized
Johns Hopkins University theoretical physicist Marc Kamionkowski is one of three physicists to be awarded the 2021 Gruber Cosmology Prize for their contributions to methods essential for studying the early universe.
May 5, 2021 Tags: cosmic microwave background, cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, Gruber Cosmology Prize, Gruber Foundation, physics, theoretical physics
| Category: Physics and Astronomy, Uncategorized
Federal funding sustains much of the critical research underway at Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. The biennial event, Hopkins on the Hill, showcases the range, value, and impact of this work.
Instead of the usual one big event on Capitol Hill, Hopkins on the Hill is virtual this year, with lunchtime programming spread across May and June. It’s a chance to learn about the cutting-edge science and projects, straight from the early career researchers and practitioners working on it. The sessions will cover everything from space exploration and extreme materials development to Hopkins’ work to track and combat COVID-19.
May 3, 2021 Tags: Hopkins on the Hill, Johns Hopkins, research funding, Science
| Category: Computer Science, Earth Science, Education/K-12, Engineering, Events Open to the Public, Institutional News, Physics and Astronomy, Public Health
By offering cells a microscopic “tightrope,” Johns Hopkins University and Virginia Tech scientists have discovered a new and surprising form of cellular movement.
March 22, 2021 Tags: Brian Camley, cell movement, cells, Johns Hopkins University, nanofiber
| Category: biology, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions have found that, on average, the temperature of galaxy clusters today is 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. That is 10 times hotter than 10 billion years ago, and four times hotter than the Sun’s outermost atmosphere called the corona. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.
November 10, 2020 Tags: astronomy, astrophysics, Brice Ménard, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Planck satellite, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the universe, universe expansion
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
As dying stars take their final few breaths of life, they gently sprinkle their ashes into the cosmos through the magnificent planetary nebulae. These ashes, spread via stellar winds, are enriched with many different chemical elements, including carbon.
Findings from a study published today in Nature Astronomy show that the final breaths of these dying stars, called white dwarfs, shed light on carbon’s origin in the Milky Way.
July 6, 2020 Tags: carbon, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Jeffrey Cummings, stars, White Dwarfs
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
Using a new technique originally designed to explore the cosmos, scientists have unveiled structures deep inside the Earth, paving the way towards a new map revealing what Earth’s interior looks like.
June 11, 2020 Tags: Brice Ménard, data, echoes, seismic echoes, seismology, Sequencer
| Category: Earth Science, Physics and Astronomy
Launching no earlier than March 6 at 11:50 PM EST, the Johns Hopkins University will send heart muscle tissues, contained in a specially-designed tissue chip the size of a small cellphone, up to the microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS) for one month of observation.
March 4, 2020 Tags: Deok-Ho Kim, heart tissue, ISS, Jonathan Tsui, NASA, space, tissue engineering
| Category: Engineering, Medicine and Nursing, Physics and Astronomy
This year, 2020, is leap year. And if two Johns Hopkins University professors had their way it would be the last. An economist and an astrophysicist have designed a new, simpler calendar, where the days would align in precisely the same way every year and a person could buy one calendar and use it forever. Every year would begin on Monday, Jan. 1. And of course leap year would be extinct, as would the occasional extra day for February.
February 10, 2020 Tags: Hanke-Henry Permanent Calender, Leap Year, Richard Conn Henry, Steve H. Hanke
| Category: Business and Economics, Physics and Astronomy, Social Sciences
Deep in our Milky Way galaxy’s center, a candy cane emerges as the centerpiece of a new, colorful composite image from a NASA camera, just in time for the holidays.
December 18, 2019 Tags: Johannes Staguhn, NASA, physics and astronomy, space
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
Quantum computers with the ability to perform complex calculations, encrypt data more securely and more quickly predict the spread of viruses, may be within closer reach thanks to a new discovery by Johns Hopkins researchers.
October 10, 2019 Tags: Chia-Ling Chien, physics and astronomy, quantum computing, quantum mechanics, superconductors, Yufan Li
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
Dark matter, which researchers believe make up about 80% of the universe’s mass, is one of the most elusive mysteries in modern physics. What exactly it is and how it came to be is a mystery, but a new Johns Hopkins University study now suggests that dark matter may have existed before the Big Bang.
August 8, 2019 Tags: Big Bang, dark matter, Department of Physics and Astronomy, particle physics, space, Tommi Tenkanen
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
April 25, 2019 CONTACT: Chanapa Tantibanchachai Office: 443-997-5056 / Cell: 928-458-9656 chanapa@jhu.edu @JHUmediareps New measurements from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirm that the Universe is expanding about 9% faster than expected based on its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang, astronomers say. The new measurements, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal, reduce the chances […]
April 25, 2019 Tags: Adam Riess, galaxies, Hubble, Hubble Space Telescope, physics and astronomy, space, Space Telescope Science Institute, Space@Hopkins, universe
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a Johns Hopkins study that used a new understanding of rock fracture and a new computer modeling method to simulate asteroid collisions.
March 4, 2019 Tags: asteroid, Charles El Mir, computer simulation, HEMI, KT Ramesh, space, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Engineering, Physics and Astronomy
Many astronomy researchers benefit from sky surveys containing millions of stars and galaxies observed by telescopes. But Brice Ménard’s colleagues say his imagination and insight make him particularly adept at discovering the universal secrets hidden in a daunting amount of data. Ménard, an astrophysicist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, has received this year’s $250,000 President’s Frontier Award to support his exploration of astronomical data.
February 13, 2019 Tags: Brice Ménard, President Ronald J. Daniels, President's Frontier Award
| Category: Homewood Campus News, Institutional News, Physics and Astronomy, University Administration, University-Related
The Curiosity Rover may have been ambling around the Gale Crater on Mars for nearly seven years but a group at Johns Hopkins University has just found a way to use it for something new: making the first surface gravity measurements on a planet other than Earth.
January 31, 2019 Tags: Curiosity Rover, gravity, Johns Hopkins University, Kevin Lewis, Mars
| Category: Physics and Astronomy, Uncategorized
In their search for life in solar systems near and far, researchers have often accepted the presence of oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere as the surest sign that life may be present there. A new Johns Hopkins study, however, recommends a reconsideration of that rule of thumb.
December 17, 2018 Tags: exoplanets, Sarah Horst, space
| Category: Chemistry, Earth Science, Physics and Astronomy
The speed and distance at which planets orbit their respective blazing stars can determine each planet’s fate—whether the planet remains a longstanding part of its solar system or evaporates into the universe’s dark graveyard more quickly.
In their quest to learn more about far-away planets beyond our own solar system, astronomers discovered that a medium-sized planet roughly the size of Neptune, GJ 3470b, is evaporating at a rate 100 times faster than a previously discovered planet of similar size, GJ 436b.
December 13, 2018 Tags: astronomy, David Sing, exoplanets, Hubble Space Telescope, NASA, space, Space Telescope Science Institute
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
Astronomers have found what could be one of the universe’s oldest stars, a body almost entirely made of materials spewed from the Big Bang.
November 5, 2018 Tags: Big Bang, Johns Hopkins University, Kevin Schlaufman, low mass, low metal, Milky Way’s “thin disk”, physics and astronomy, stars
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
Media advisory: Background for reporters on the heat shield that will protect NASA’s Parker Solar Probe as it swoops through the solar atmosphere, less than 4 million miles from the surface of the sun.
August 8, 2018 Tags: Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, materials science, NASA, Parker Solar Probe, sun, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Engineering, Physics and Astronomy
The dust that coats much of the surface of Mars originates largely from a single thousand-kilometer-long geological formation near the Red Planet’s equator, scientists have found.
July 24, 2018 Tags: dust, Johns Hopkins University, Kevin Lewis, Lujendra Ojha, Mars, Medusae Fossae
| Category: Physics and Astronomy, Uncategorized
A theorized but never-before detected property of quantum matter has now been spotted in the lab at Johns Hopkins.
June 11, 2018 Tags: condensed matter physics, condensed matter research, Institute for Quantum Matter, Natalia Drichko, Nora Hassan, physics, quantum matter
| Category: Physics and Astronomy
Johns Hopkins University’s Alex Szalay will lead a two-year national effort to begin building a network allowing scientists to more efficiently store and analyze huge caches of data and share them with other researchers.
June 7, 2018 Tags: Alexander Szalay, Big Data, data sets, data-intensive science, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, National Science Foundation, Open Storage Network
| Category: Computer Science, Physics and Astronomy
