Looking for dark energy – in the lab
August 21, 2019
This guest post from Dr. Ben Elder, a postdoctoral fellow in the Particle Theory and Cosmology Group, reporting on the very exciting publication of a research project. The aim? Trying to to understand nothing less than one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology by looking for experimental evidence in the lab! When we look at …
Quantum Sensing the brains of Cheltenham Science Festival
July 30, 2019
Guest post by Natalie Rhodes (3rd year MSci undergraduate) I was absolutely delighted to be invited to join a group of PhD students, Post Docs, and undergraduates to present to the public “Quantum Sensing the Brain” at the start of June. I had just finished my third year exams (the day before we went!) and …
Brain Imaging on the BBC: Dementia Choir
May 10, 2019
Members of the Medical Imaging group from the School of Physics and Astronomy recently featured in a BBC documentary entitled “Our Dementia Choir“. In this guest post, Dr. Lauren Gascoyne and Dr. Rebecca Dewey describe the science behind the deep connection between music and our brains. The two-part show is available on demand from BBC …
CSI: East Midlands
March 13, 2019
In this guest post by Dr. James Sharp, we learn about about cutting-edge new techniques used to measure fingerprints. A paper describing this work was published in the journal Science and Justice and was recently featured on BBC CrimeWatch Roadshow. For more information on how physics and forensics go together, see a previous post on this …
Nottingham physicists develop a wearable brain scanner
March 23, 2018
Exciting results out of the University of Nottingham magnetoencephalography (MEG) lab appeared in the prestigious journal Nature this week in a research paper entitled ‘Moving magnetoencephalography towards real-world applications with a wearable system‘. In the accompanying video, Dr. Matt Brookes and Nottingham PhD students Elena Boto and Niall Holmes explain how the combination of quantum sensors, …
Student research: Teaching neural networks to identify gravitational lenses
March 5, 2018
The major research project in the fourth year of our MSci degree is a chance for students to get hands-on experience in the frontline physics research our academic staff are working on, i.e. where we don’t know what the answer is going to be when we start! Some projects lead to valuable advances in the …
The Art of Physics — Guest Post by Noah Harwicke
January 4, 2018
The following is a post from Noah Hardwicke that I really, really should have uploaded long before now. (Sorry, Noah). The Christmas and New Year holiday, combined with the traditional (at least for me) start-of-year illness, slowed me down. Noah highlights the key importance of creativity in physics, and describes how mathematics and physics can …
A summer Down Under chasing gravitational waves
November 1, 2017
Guest post from former Nottingham undergraduate (MSci Physics 2017) and now first-year PhD student Lizzie Elmer, who went to Australia for a summer research experience and ended up playing an important role in one of the most exciting recent discoveries in physics! Finding an internship At the beginning of 2016, I was trying to decide …
Levitation in the lab
September 27, 2017
A guest post by Senior Research Fellow Dr. Richard Hill, whose research recently graced the cover of the September 15 volume of the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. I have two superconducting magnets in my lab generating strong magnetic fields that can levitate water, wax, alcoholic drinks, flies, supercarrots, you know, that kind of thing… …
Biggest infra-red image of sky ever taken released by Nottingham astronomers
August 3, 2017
On the 1st August 2017, Nottingham’s astronomy group released the largest ever infra-red image of the sky. The image has 1.5 million megapixels and gives the most detailed view ever of the northern hemisphere from the ecliptic plane right up to 60 degrees north of the ecliptic. In this guest post, Dr. Simon Dye …