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.
When a solar flare filled with charged particles erupts from the sun, its magnetic fields sometime break a widely accepted rule of physics. The flux-freezing theorem dictates that the magnetic lines of force should flow away in lock-step with the particles, whole and unbroken. Instead, the lines sometimes break apart and quickly reconnect in a way that has mystified astrophysicists. But in a paper published in the May 23 issue of the journal Nature, an interdisciplinary research team led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist says it has found a key to the mystery.
May 22, 2013 Tags: astrophysics, flux-freezing theorem, magnetic fields, solar flares, turbulence
| Category: Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Technology
Financed by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, one of the world’s fastest and most advanced scientific computer networks—one capable of transferring in and out of The Johns Hopkins University per day the amount of data equivalent to 80 million file cabinets filled with text—will be built on the university’s Homewood campus, with support from the University of Maryland, College Park.
November 7, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, astrophysics, Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, College Park, computer science, Data-Scope, datasets, genomics, Homewood High-Performance Computing Cluster, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, Jonathan Bagger, large-scale computations, Mark Robbins, medical research, National Science Foundation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, petabytes, physics, San Diego Supercomputer Center, scientific computer network, turbulence, U.S. Senatory Barbara Mikulski, University of Maryland, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Natural Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Social Sciences
It seems perfectly natural to expect that two motorists who depart from the same location and follow the same directions will end up at the same destination. But according to a Johns Hopkins University mathematical physicist, this is not true when the “directions” are provided by a turbulent fluid flow, such as you find in a churning river or stream. Verifying earlier theoretical predictions, Gregory Eyink’s computer experiments reveal that, in principle, two identical small beads dropped into the same turbulent flow at precisely the same starting location will end up in different – and entirely random – destinations. An article about the phenomenon appears in a recent issue of Physical Review E.
June 1, 2011 Tags: Alexander Szalay, applied mathematics and statistics, Charles Meneveau, computer experiments, Gregory Eyink, Hannes Alfvéen, Krieger School of Arts and Science, National Science Foundation, Randal Burns, spontaneous stochasticity, turbulence, virtual streams, Whiting School of Engineering
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Engineering, Homewood Campus News
Large wind farms are being built around the world as a cleaner way to generate electricity, but operators are still searching for the most efficient way to arrange the massive turbines that turn moving air into power. To help steer wind farm owners in the right direction, Charles Meneveau, a Johns Hopkins fluid mechanics and turbulence expert, working with a colleague in Belgium, has devised a new formula through which the optimal spacing for a large array of turbines can be obtained.
January 19, 2011 Tags: fluid mechanics, mechanical engineering, turbulence, wind farms, wind power, wind turbines
| Category: Engineering, Environment, Technology
