George Smoot, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2006 for his studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), died on 18 September at the age of 80. Smoot’s work on the blackbody form and anisotropy of the CMB radiation provided strong evidence that the universe was created in a massive explosion called the Big Bang.

Born in Yukon, Florida on 20 February 1945, Smoot studied mathematics and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with a dual major. He then completed a PhD in particle physics at MIT in 1970.

Smoot then moved to the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he began working on the NASA-funded High Altitude Particle Physics Experiment. The instrument was designed to search for particle interactions at higher energies than accelerators could produce at the time.

After devising other balloon-borne detectors to search for antimatter, in 1973 Smoot switched to studying the CMB, which had been discovered by Arno Penias and Robert Wilson in 1964.

Smoot and colleagues conceived several experiments to detect possible variations in the CMB, which at the time was thought to be isotropic. This included using a differential microwave radiometer (DMR) aboard a Lockheed U-2 plane that could measure differences in temperature as small as one-thousandth of a degree in the microwave radiation between two points.

Smoot then proposed a space-based mission to measure possible anisotropies. The probe eventually became NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which went into space in 1989 containing a DMR instrument that Smoot led.

Following two years of observations, in April 1992 the COBE team announced that the CMB still bore the black-body signature, albeit at a much lower temperature (2.7 K) due to the ongoing expansion of the universe. The COBE researchers also announced that they had detected tiny temperature fluctuations – as small as one part in 100 000 – in the CMB.

For the work, Smoot together with John Mather who worked on another instrument aboard COBE, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”.

After COBE, Smoot led another balloon experiment – the Millimeter Anisotropy eXperiment IMaging Array – that refined the measurements of the anisotropies of the CMB.

Smoot also collaborated with the journalist Keay Davidson on the 1993 book Wrinkles in Time, which chronicled efforts to measure variations in the CMB.

Media star

After winning the prize, Smoot continued his studies of the CMB as one of the founders of the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which launched in April 2009. He also worked in other areas of cosmology such as the study of gamma-ray bursts.

In 2007 he became founding director of the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, in which he used the money from his Nobel prize as seed cash. Two years later he joined Université Paris-Diderot VII (now known as the Université Paris-Cité) where he founded the Paris Center for Cosmological Physics.

Smoot also made several media appearances throughout his career including playing himself on the hit-TV show The Big Bang Theory and in a TV commercial for Intuit TurboTax. He also appeared in the TV show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? where he bagged the top $1m prize.

The post Cosmic microwave background pioneer George Smoot dies aged 80 appeared first on Physics World.

London-based artist Oksana Kondratyeva has created a new stained-glass artwork – entitled Discovery – that is inspired by the detection of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.

Born in Ukraine, Kondratyeva has a PhD in the theory of architecture and has an artist residency at the Romont Glass Museum (Vitromusée Romont) in Switzerland, where Discovery is currently exhibited.

In 2023 Kondratyeva travelled to visit the LHC at CERN, which she notes represents “more than a laboratory [but] a gateway to the unknown”.

“Discovery draws inspiration from the awe I felt standing at the frontier of human knowledge, where particles collide at unimaginable energies and new forms of matter are revealed,” Kondratyeva told Physics World.

Kondratyeva says that the focal point of the artwork – a circle structured with geometric precision – represents the collision of two high-energy protons.

The surrounding lead lines in the panel trace the trajectories of particle decays as they move through a magnetic field: right-curved lines represent positively charged particles, left-curved lines indicate negatively charged ones, while straight lines signify neutral particles unaffected by the magnetic field.

The geometric composition within the central circle reflects the hidden symmetries of physical laws – patterns that only emerge when studying the behaviour of particle interactions.

Kondratyeva says that the use of mouth-blown flashed glass adds further depth to the piece, with colours and subtle shades moving from hot and luminous at the centre to cooler, more subdued tones toward the edges.

“Through glass, light and colour I sought to express the invisible forces and delicate symmetries that define our universe – ideas born in the realm of physics, yet deeply resonant in artistic expression,” notes Kondratyeva. “The work also continues a long tradition of stained glass as a medium of storytelling, reflecting the deep symmetries of nature and the human drive to find order in chaos.”

In 2022 Kondratyeva teamed up with Rigetti Computing to create piece of art inspired by the packaging for a quantum chip. Entitled Per scientiam ad astra (through science to the stars), the artwork was displayed at the 2024 British Glass Biennale at the Ruskin Glass Centre in Stourbridge, UK.

The post Discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN inspires new stained-glass artwork appeared first on Physics World.

More than a quarter of UK university physics departments could be shut down within the next couple of years, according to a survey carried out by the Institute of Physics (IOP). It also reveals that almost 60% of departmental heads expect physics degree courses to close within that time, while more than 80% of those questioned say they expect to see job losses.

The survey findings are published in a new report – Physics Matters: Funding the Foundations of Growth– that says UK university physics is a “major strength” of the UK university system and vital to “national security and technological sovereignty”. The UK currently has about 17,000 physics undergraduates and more than 6000 physics department staff, with about 1 in 20 jobs in the UK using physics-related knowledge and skills.

However, the report adds that this strength cannot be taken for granted and points to “worrying signs” that university physics has started to “punch below its weight”. This is compounded, the IOP says, by a drop in the number of students studying physics at UK universities and flat grant funding for UK physics departments over the past decade.

In addition, UK universities are being hit by financial challenges and funding shortfalls caused by inflationary pressure and a drop in international student numbers. Given that physics comes with high teaching costs, the report states this threatens a “perfect storm” for university physics departments.

Close to breaking point

The survey of 31 departmental heads, which was carried out in August, found that three unnamed departments face imminent closure, with a further 11 anticipating shutting courses. When asked to look ahead over the next two years, eight say they expect to face closure, with 18 anticipating course closures.

One head of physics at a UK university told the IOP, which publishes Physics World, that they are concerned they are “close to breaking point”. “Our university has a £30m deficit,” the anonymous head said. “Staff recruitment is frozen, morale is low. Yet colleagues in our school continue to deliver with less and less and under increasing pressure.”

Jonte Hance, a quantum physicist at Newcastle University, told Physics World that the threat of closures is “horrifying”. In 2004, Newcastle closed its physics department before reopening it over a decade later. “Worryingly, this approach – ignoring, or even cutting, any departments that don’t make a massive short-term profit – doesn’t just seem to be a panicked knee-jerk response on the part of vice-chancellors, but part of a concerted and planned strategy, aiming to turn universities into business incubators,” adds Hance.

Towards a cliff edge

The IOP is now calling on the UK government to commit additional funding for science and engineering departments to help with the operation, maintenance, refurbishment and building of labs and technical facilities. It also wants an “early-warning system” created for departments at risk as well as changes to visa policy to remove international students from net migration figures, retain the graduate visa in its current form, and make “global talent and skilled worker” visas more affordable.

While we understand the pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to sound the alarm

Keith Burnett

In addition, the IOP wants the UK government to develop a decade-long plan that includes reform of higher-education funding so universities can fund the cost of teaching “important subjects such as physics”. Keith Burnett, the outgoing IOP president, warns that without such action, the UK is “walking towards a cliff edge”, although he believes there is still time to “avert a crisis”.

“While we understand the pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to sound the alarm for a national capability fundamental to our wellbeing, competitiveness and the defence of the realm,” says Burnett, who is former vice-chancellor at the University of Sheffield and former chair of physics at the University of Oxford. “Physics researchers and talented physics students are our future, but if action isn’t taken now to stabilise, strengthen and sustain one of our greatest national assets, we risk leaving them high and dry.”

The post Quarter of UK physics departments face closure, finds IOP report appeared first on Physics World.

NASA has launched a two-year mission to study the boundary of the heliosphere, a huge protective bubble in space created by the Sun. The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) took off today aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.  The mission is now on a four-month journey to Lagrange point 1 (L1) – a point in space about 1.6 million kilometres from the Earth towards the Sun.

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun into space that helps to form the heliosphere. IMAP will study the solar wind and its interaction with the interstellar medium to better understand the heliosphere and its boundaries, which begin about 14 billion kilometres from Earth. This boundary offers protection from harsh radiation from space and is key to creating and maintaining a habitable solar system.

IMAP, which is 2.4 m in diameter and almost 1 m high, will also support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles that can harm satellites as well as disrupt global communications and electrical grids on Earth. From L1, IMAP will provide a 30-minute warning to astronauts and spacecraft near Earth of harmful radiation.

To do so, IMAP contains 10 instruments that capture data on energetic neutral atoms, the solar wind and interstellar dust.

They include a high-energy ion telescope, an electron instrument as well as a magnetometer that has been developed by Imperial College London. It will measure the strength and direction of magnetic fields in space, providing crucial data to improve our understanding of space weather.

“Our magnetic field instrument will help us understand how particles are accelerated at shock waves and travel through the solar system,” notes Imperial’s Timothy Horbury. “I’m especially excited that our data will be made public within minutes of being measured over a million miles away, supporting real-time space weather forecasts. It’s a great example of how scientific measurements can positively impact society.”

The IMAP mission is led by Princeton University and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory with contributions from 25 institutions across six countries.

The post NASA launches IMAP mission to provide real-time space weather forecasts appeared first on Physics World.

Photographers Weitang Liang, Qi Yang and Chuhong Yu have beaten thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to bag the 2025 Royal Observatory Greenwich’s ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 17.

The image – The Andromeda Core – showcases the core of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) in exceptional detail, revealing the intricate structure of the galaxy’s central region and its surrounding stellar population.

The image was taken with a long focal-length telescope from the AstroCamp Observatory, Nerpio, Spain.

“Not to show it all − this is one of the greatest virtues of this photo. The Andromeda Galaxy has been photographed in so many different ways and so many times with telescopes that it is hard to imagine a new photo would ever add to what we’ve already seen,” notes astrophotographer László Francsics who was a judge for this year’s competition. “But this does just that, an unusual dynamic composition with unprecedented detail that doesn’t obscure the overall scene.”

As well as winning the £10,000 top prize, the image has gone on display along with other selected pictures from the competition at an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum observatory that opened on 12 September.

The award – now in its 17th year – is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with the astrophotography firm ZWO and BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

The post Andromeda image bags Royal Observatory Greenwich prize appeared first on Physics World.

“Picture the world of Avatar, where glowing plants light up an entire ecosystem,” describes Shuting Liu of South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou.

Well, that vision is now a step closer thanks to researchers in China who have created glow-in-the-dark succulents that recharge in sunlight.

Instead of coaxing cells to glow through genetic modification, the team instead used afterglow phosphor particles – materials similar to those found in glow-in-the-dark toys – that can absorb light and release it slowly over time.

The researchers then injected the particles into succulents, finding that they produced a strong glow, thanks to the narrow, uniform and evenly distributed channels within the leaf that helped to disperse the particles.

After a couple of minutes of exposure to sunlight or indoor LED light, the modified plants glowed for up to two hours. By using different types of phosphors, the researchers created plants that shine in various colours, including green, red and blue.

The team even built a glowing plant wall with 56 succulents, which was bright enough to illuminate nearby objects.

“I just find it incredible that an entirely human-made, micro-scale material can come together so seamlessly with the natural structure of a plant,” notes Liu. “The way they integrate is almost magical. It creates a special kind of functionality.”

The post Researchers create glow-in-the-dark succulents that recharge with sunlight appeared first on Physics World.

An astrophysics PhD student from County Armagh in Northern Ireland has combined his passion for science with Gaelic football to help his club achieve a historic promotion.

Eamon McGleenan plays for his local team – O’Connell’s GAC Tullysaran – and is a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he is a member of the Predictive Sports Analytics (PSA) research team, which was established in 2023.

McGleenan and his PhD supervisor David Jess teamed up with GAC Tullysaran to investigate whether data analysis and statistical techniques could improve their training and results.

Over five months, the Queen’s University researchers took over 550 million individual measurements from the squad, which included information such as player running speed, accelerations and heart rates.

“We applied mathematical models to the big data we obtained from the athletes,” notes McGleenan. “This allowed us to examine how the athletes evolved over time and we then provided key insights for the coaching staff, who then generated bespoke training routines and match tactics.”

The efforts immediately paid off as in July GAC Tullysaran won their league by two points and were promoted for the first time in 135 years to the top-flight Senior Football League, which they will start in March.

“The statistical insight provided by PSA is of great use and I like how it lets me get the balance of training right, especially in the run-up to match day,” noted Tullysaran manager Pauric McGlone, who adds that it also provided a bit of competition in the squad that ensured the players were “conditioned in a way that allows them to perform at their best”.

For more about the PSA’s activities, see here.

The post Big data helps Gaelic football club achieve promotion following 135-year wait appeared first on Physics World.

Errors in some of this year’s A-level physics exam papers could leave students without good enough grades to study physics at university. The mistakes have forced Tom Grinyer, chief executive of the Institute of Physics (IOP), to write to all heads of physics at UK universities, calling on them to “take these exceptional circumstances into account during the final admissions process”. The IOP is particularly concerned about students whose grades are lower than expected or are “a significant outlier” compared to other subjects.

The mistakes in question appeared in the physics (A) exam papers 1 and 2 set by the OCR exam board. Erratum notices had been issued to students at the start of the exam in June, but a further error in paper 2 was only spotted after the exam had taken place, causing some students to get stuck. Physics paper 2 from the rival AQA exam board was also seen to contain complex phrasing that hindered students’ ability to answer the question and led to time pressures.

A small survey of physics teachers carried out after the exam by the IOP, which publishes Physics World, reveals that 41% were dissatisfied with the OCR physics exam papers and more than half (58%) felt that students had a negative experience. Two-thirds of teachers, meanwhile, reported that students had a negative experience during the AQA exam. A-levels are mostly taken by 18 year olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with the grades being used by universities to decide admission.

Grinyer says that the IOP is engaging in “regular, open dialogue with exam boards” to ensure that the assessment process supports and encourages students, while maintaining the rigour and integrity of the qualification. “Our immediate concern,” Grinyer warns, “is that the usual standardization processes and adjustments to grade boundaries – particularly for the OCR paper with errors – may fail to compensate fully for the negative effect on exam performance for some individuals.”

An OCR spokesperson told Physics World that the exam board is “sorry to the physics students and teachers affected by errors in A-level physics this year”. The board says that it “evaluated student performance across all physics papers, and took all necessary steps to mitigate the impact of these errors”. The OCR claims that the 13,000 students who sat OCR A-level physics A this year “can be confident” in their A-level physics results.

“We have taken immediate steps to review and strengthen our quality assurance processes to prevent such issues from occurring in the future,” the OCR adds. “We appreciated the opportunity to meet with the Institute of Physics to discuss these issues, and also to discuss our shared interest in encouraging the growth of this vital subject.”

Almost 23,500 students sat AQA A-level physics this year and an AQA spokesperson told Physics World that the exam board “listened to feedback and took steps to make A-level physics more accessible” to students and that there “is no need for universities to make an exception for AQA physics outcomes when it comes to admissions criteria”.

“These exam papers were error-free, as teachers and students would expect, and we know that students found the papers this year to be more accessible than last year,” they say. “We’ll continue to engage with any feedback that we receive, including feedback from the Institute of Physics, to explore how we can enhance our A-level physics assessments and give students the best possible experience when they sit exams.”

Students ‘in tears’

The IOP now wants A-level physics students to be given a “fair opportunity” when it comes to university admissions. “These issues are particularly concerning for students on widening participation pathways, many of whom already face structural barriers to high-stakes assessment,” the IOP letter states. “The added challenge of inaccessible or error-prone exam papers risks compounding disadvantage and may not reflect the true potential of these students.”

The IOP also contacted AQA last year over inaccessible contexts and language used in previous physics exams. But despite AQA’s assurances that the problems would be addressed, some of the same issues have now recurred. Helen Sinclair, head of physics at the all-girls Wimbledon High School, believes that the “variable quality” of recent A-level papers have had “far-reaching consequences” on young people thinking of going into physics at university.

“Our students have exceptionally high standards for themselves and the opaque nature of many questions affects them deeply, no matter what grades they ultimately achieve. This has even led some to choose to apply for other subjects at university,” she told Physics World. “This is not to say that papers should not be challenging; however, better scaffolding within some questions would help students anchor themselves in what is an already stressful environment, and would ultimately enable them to better demonstrate their full potential within an exam.”

Students come out of the exams feeling disheartened, and those students share their perceptions with younger students

Abbie Hope, Stokesley School

Those concerns are echoed by Abbie Hope, head of physics at Stokesley School near Middlesbrough. She says the errors in this year’s exam papers are “not acceptable” and believes that OCR has “failed their students”. Hope says that AQA physics papers in recent years have been “very challenging” and have resulted in students feeling like they cannot do physics. She also says some have emerged from exam halls in tears.

“Students come out of the exams feeling disheartened and share their perceptions with younger students,” she says. “I would rather students sat a more accessible paper, with higher grade boundaries so they feel more successful when leaving the exam hall, rather than convinced they have underachieved and then getting a surprise on results day.” Hope fears the mistakes will undermine efforts to encourage uptake and participation in physics and that exam boards need to serve students and teachers better.

A ‘growing unease’

Rachael Houchin, head of physics at Royal Grammar School Newcastle, says this year’s errors have added to her “growing unease” about the state of physics education in the UK. “Such incidents – particularly when they are public and recurring – do little to improve the perception of the subject or encourage its uptake,” she says. “Everyone involved in physics education – at any level – has a duty to get it right. If we fail, we risk physics drifting into the category of subjects taught predominantly in selective or independent schools, and increasingly absent from the mainstream.”

Hari Rentala, associate director of education and workforce at the IOP, is concerned that the errors unfairly “perpetuate the myth” that physics is a difficult subject. “OCR appear to have managed the situation as best they can, but this is not much consolation for how students will have felt during the exam and over the ensuing weeks,” says Rentala. “Once again AQA set some questions that were overly challenging. We can only hope that the majority of students who had a negative experience as a result of these issues at least receive a fair grade – as grade boundaries have been adjusted down.”

The post Errors in A-level physics papers could jeopardize student university admissions, Institute of Physics warns appeared first on Physics World.

It’s well documented that a frothy head on a beverage can stop the liquid from sloshing around and onto the floor – it’s one reason why when walking around with coffee, it swills around more than beer, for example.

When it comes to beer, a clear sign of a good brew is a big head of foam at the top of a poured glass.

Beer foam is made of many small bubbles of air, separated from each other by thin films of liquid. These thin films must remain stable, or the bubbles will pop, and the foam will collapse.

What holds these thin films together is not completely understood and is likely conglomerates of proteins, surface viscosity or the presence of surfactants – molecules that reduce surface tension and are found in soaps and detergents.

To find out more, researchers from ETH Zurich and Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT) investigated beer-foam stability for different types of beers at varying stages of the fermentation process.

They found that for single-fermentation beers, the foams are mostly held together with the surface viscosity of the beer. This is influenced by proteins in the beer – the more they contain the more viscous the film and more stable the foam will be.

“We can directly visualize what’s happening when two bubbles come into close proximity,” notes EUT material scientist Emmanouil Chatzigiannakis. “We can directly see the bubble’s protein aggregates, their interface, and their structure.”

When it comes to double-fermented beers, however, the proteins in the beer are altered slightly by yeast cells and come together to form a two-dimensional membrane that keeps foam intact longer.

The head was found to be even more stable for triple-fermented beers, which include Belgium Trappist beers. The proteins change further and behave like a surfactant that stabilizes the bubbles.

The team says that the finding of how the fermentation process alters the stability of bubbles could be used to produce more efficient ways of creating foams – or identify ways to control the amount of froth so that everyone can pour a perfect glass of beer every time. Cheers!

The post Why foamy heads on Belgium beers last so long appeared first on Physics World.

Rainer Weiss, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2017 for the discovery of gravitational waves, died on 25 August at the age of 92. Weiss came up with the idea of detecting gravitational waves by measuring changes in distance as tiny as 10^–18 m via an interferometer several kilometres long. His proposal eventually led to the formation of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which first detected such waves in 2015.

Weiss was born in Berlin, Germany, on 29 September 1932 shortly before the Nazis rose to power. With a father who was Jewish and an ardent communist, Weiss and his family were forced to flee the country – first to Czechoslovakia and then to the US in 1939.  Weiss was raised in New York, finishing his school days at the private Columbia Grammar School thanks to a scholarship from a refugee relief organization.

In 1950 Weiss began studying electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before switching to physics, eventually earning a PhD in 1962, developing atomic clocks under the supervision of Jerrold Zacharias,. He then worked at Tufts University before moving to Princeton University, where he was a research associate with the astronomer and physicist Robert Dicke.

In 1964 Weiss returned to MIT, where he began developing his idea of using a large interferometer to measure gravitational waves. Teaming up with Kip Thorne at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Weiss drew up a feasibility study for a kilometre-scale laser interferometer. In 1979 the National Science Foundation funded Caltech and MIT to develop the proposal to build LIGO.

Construction of two LIGO detectors – one in Hanford, Washington and the other at Livingston, Louisiana, each of which featured arms 4 km long – began in 1990, with the facilities opening in 2002. After almost a decade of operation, however, no waves had been detected so in 2011 the two observatories were upgraded to make them 10 times more sensitive than before.

On 14 September 2015 – during the first observation run of what was known as Advanced LIGO, or aLIGO – the interferometer detected gravitational waves from two merging black holes some  1.3 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery was announced by those working on aLIGO in February 2016.

The following year, Weiss was awarded one half of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”. The other half was shared by Thorne and fellow Caltech physicist Barry Barish, who was LIGO project director.

‘An indelible mark’

As well as pioneering the detection of gravitational waves, Weiss also developed atomic clocks and led efforts to measure the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background via weather balloons. He co-founded NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer project, measurements from which have helped support the Big Bang theory describing the expansion of the universe.

In addition to the Nobel prize, Weiss was awarded the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2006, the Einstein Prize from the American Physical Society in 2007 as well as the Shaw Prize and the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, both in 2016.

MIT’s dean of science Nergis Mavalvala, who worked with Weiss to build an early prototype of a gravitational-wave detector as part of her PhD in the 1990s, says that every gravitational-wave event that is observed “will be a reminder of his legacy”.

“[Weiss] leaves an indelible mark on science and a gaping hole in our lives,” says Mavalvala. “I am heartbroken, but also so grateful for having him in my life, and for the incredible gifts he has given us – of passion for science and discovery, but most of all to always put people first.”

The post Rainer Weiss: US gravitational-wave pioneer dies aged 92 appeared first on Physics World.

NASA has successfully launched a mission to explore the interactions between the Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields. The Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS) craft was sent into low-Earth orbit on 23 July from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Following a month of calibration, the twin-satellite mission is expected to operate for a year.

The spacecraft will observe particles and electromagnetic fields in the Earth’s northern magnetic “cusp region”, which encircles the North Pole where the Earth’s magnetic field lines curve down toward Earth.

This unique vantage point allows researchers to study how magnetic reconnection — when field lines connect and explosively reconfigure — affects the space environment. Such observations will help researchers understand how processes change over both space and time.

The two satellites will collect data from over 3000 cusp crossings during the one-year mission with the information being used to understand space-weather phenomena that can disrupt satellite operations, communications and power grids on Earth.

Each nearly identical octagonal satellite – weighing less than 200 kg each – features six instruments including magnetomers, electric-field instruments and devices to measure the energy of ions and electrons in plasma around the spacecraft.

It will operate in a Sun-synchronous orbit about 590 km above ground with the satellites following one behind the other in close separation, passing through regions of space at least 10 seconds apart.

“TRACERS is an exciting mission,” says Stephen Fuselier from the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, who is the mission’s deputy principal investigator. “The data from that single pass through the cusp were amazing. We can’t wait to get the data from thousands of cusp passes.”

The post NASA launches TRACERS mission to study Earth’s ‘magnetic shield’ appeared first on Physics World.

The space scientist Michele Dougherty from Imperial College London has been appointed the next Astronomer Royal – the first woman to hold the position. She will succeed the University of Cambridge cosmologist Martin Rees, who has held the role for the past three decades.

The title of Astronomer Royal dates back to the creation of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1675, when it mostly involved advising Charles II on using the stars to improve navigation at sea. John Flamsteed from Derby was the first Astronomer Royal and since then 15 people have held the role.

Dougherty will now act as the official adviser to King Charles III on astronomical matters. She will hold the role alongside her Imperial job as well as being executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the next president of the Institute of Physics (IOP), a two-year position she will take up in October.

After gaining a PhD in 1988 from the University of Natal in South Africa, Dougherty moved to Imperial in 1991, where she was head of physics from 2018 until 2024. She has been principal investigator of the magnetometer on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons and also for the magnetometer for the JUICE craft, which is currently travelling to Jupiter to study its three icy moons.

She was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 New Year Honours for “services to UK Physical Science Research”. Dougherty is also a fellow of the Royal Society, who won its Hughes medal in 2008 for studying Saturn’s moons and had a Royal Society Research Professorship from 2014 to 2019.

“I am absolutely delighted to be taking on the important role of Astronomer Royal,” says Dougherty. “As a young child I never thought I’d end up working on planetary spacecraft missions and science, so I can’t quite believe I’m actually taking on this position. I look forward to engaging the general public in how exciting astronomy is, and how important it and its outcomes are to our everyday life.”

Tom Grinyer, IOP group chief executive officer, offered his “warmest congratulations” to Dougherty. “As incoming president of the IOP and the first woman to hold this historic role [of Astronomer Royal], Dougherty is an inspirational ambassador for science and a role model for every young person who has gazed up at the stars and imagined a future in physics or astronomy.”

The post IOP president-elect Michele Dougherty named next Astronomer Royal appeared first on Physics World.