Eclipse news from the School of Physics and Astronomy
August 22, 2017
Among the millions who watched the first total solar eclipse to be seen across America for nearly a century was Professor Mike Merrifield, Head of the University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy. Here’s one of the pictures he took as he joined an excited crowd in Central Park, New York. He said: “Clouds around, …
Levitation and lightning -100s of school children ‘Spring into Science’
April 24, 2017
How do you make music with electrical sparks or float balls in the air using only sound? Children from schools across Nottingham found out the answers to these and many other scientific questions at the first ever ‘Spring into Science’ event being held at The University of Nottingham today. A team of experts from the University’s …
Colleagues in Physics and Astronomy remember Professor Lawrie Challis OBE
April 19, 2017
Professor Laurence Eaves and Professor Tony Kent, in the School of Physics and Astronomy, at the University of Nottingham remember Professor Lawrence Challis. This obituary has been published by the Institute of Physics on MyIOP. Lawrie Challis, who died on 24 March 2017, was an experimental physicist who did distinguished work at the University of Nottingham …
Applications for our 2017 BSA Media Fellowships are now open
February 27, 2017
Experience life as a science journalist Do you want to find out, first hand, how academic research is reported by the media and play an active part in the process? For the third year running the University of Nottingham is offering funded places on the British Science Association’s 2017 Media Fellowships Scheme. The BSA Media Fellowships …
British Embassy in Russia support for the Periodic Table of Videos
December 16, 2016
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially adopted the names of the four new chemical elements this year – big news for the award winning Periodic Table of Videos. And this week they decided to release all four new videos at once! Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine and Oganesson. The names of two of them are directly …
Consensus is not a dirty word
This blog by Michael Merrifield, Professor of Astronomy in the School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Nottingham, has been given extra poignancy by recent comments from the Trump transition team. Science is, by its very nature, a collective activity “If it’s consensus, it isn’t science.” This quote from a speech by Michael Crichton …
Black moon on the rise
September 30, 2016
Julian Onions a Post-Graduate research student in the School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Nottingham discusses tonight’s Black Moon – the second new moon in the calendar month – or is it? On Friday 29th September, we have a black moon. I admit I had to look up this term as it …
In praise of ‘small astronomy’.
September 21, 2016
A blog by Michael Merrifield, Professor of Astronomy in the School of Physics and Astronomy. A number of years back, I had the great privilege of interviewing the Dutch astronomer Adriaan Blaauw for a TV programme. He must have been well into his eighties at the time, but was still cycling into work every day …
What has the comet Swift-Tuttle got to do with the Perseid meteor shower?
August 9, 2016
The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most stunning celestial events in the astronomical calendar and this year it will be better than usual. Perseids are so called because they appear to come from the constellation Perseus. But, as Christopher Conselice, Professor of Astrophysics explains – the Perseid cloud is actually debris in space which …
Galaxy clusters – what are they?
June 24, 2016
Over 500 scientists are descending on the Jubilee Campus at The University of Nottingham next week to discuss the latest breakthroughs and discoveries in astronomy. Many of these astronomers will be discussing massive agglomerations of galaxies called clusters. Dr Elizabeth Cooke and Kshitija Kelkar who studying distant clusters of galaxies here at the The University of Nottingham. Here …
Press releases
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