One white dwarf or two? That’s what astronomers have been asking about Type Ia supernovae, the key to measuring cosmic distance. Is the explosion from one white dwarf grown fat from feeding off another star, or are two white dwarfs merging? A new study suggests the latter.
Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics and LBNL senior scientist, will share the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with two other scientists, including former UC Berkeley postdoc Adam Riess, for their discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This discovery in 1998 led to the realization that the universe is largely composed of an enigmatic “dark energy.”
The deadly pathogen known as sudden oak death is spreading throughout the SF Bay Area, infecting more trees in more places than have ever been seen before, according to researchers tracking the disease. were double and in some cases triple what they were last year,” said Matteo Garbelotto, the UC Berkeley forest pathologist.
CITRIS researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Merced have received a $2 million NSF grant to expand their network of wireless sensors in the Sierra Nevada. The sensors enable remote monitoring of snow depth, stream flow, water content in soil and use of water in vegetation – data that will be used to help manage one of the most precious resources in the state.
An international team of students from Berkeley, South Korea, Puerto Rico and London is building a tiny CubeSat spacecraft, designed to carry out research high above the Earth, in Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab. CubeSats are the wave of the future for space science research and education.
Previous research has revealed that only a small percentage of Wikipedia entries are authored by women. But sheer numbers don’t tell the whole story of the online encyclopedia’s “gender gap,” say scholars at the School of Information.
If tripping in public or mistaking an overweight woman for a mother-to-be leaves you red-faced, don’t feel bad. A new UC Berkeley study suggests that people who are easily embarrassed are also more trustworthy, and more generous. In short, embarrassment can be a good thing.
“Presumed Guilty,” a film made by public-policy grad students Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, won an Emmy Award in New York two weeks ago. The documentary probing the Mexican criminal justice system was honored for best investigative journalism.
The very first cohort of Cal Energy Corps student interns showcased an wide array of sustainable-energy research and service they conducted around the world this summer, at a Sept. 22 campus symposium. Their projects ranged from a low-tech food dehydrator, with a community on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, to advanced science to improve the formulation of new biofuels.
