The Institute for Fundamental Science (IFS) enhances the experimental, theoretical, and astronomy research activities at the University of Oregon. IFS is one of several centers and institutes supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, and maintains close relationships with the Department of Physics, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Mathematics, and the Materials Science Institute.
The institute hosts visiting scientists, supports graduate and undergraduate student research, facilitates interaction between the experimental activities and theoretical investigations of IFS members, and fosters communication of research to the broader community.
IFS members have major involvement in international collaborations including the ATLAS and FASER Experiments at CERN, LIGO’s gravitational wave observatories, and others. We have vigorous programs of research in astronomy and astrophysics; condensed matter theory and statistical mechanics; data science; mathematics; particle theory; quantum information and quantum optics; and the International Linear Collider project.
Center Activities
A celestial trifecta: What to know about Tuesday’s lunar eclipse
16 September 2024
Source
Stargazers will be in for another celestial treat Tuesday night as three cosmic events will occur at the same time during the full moon.
After last month brought space enthusiasts a blue supermoon, September’s harvest moon will not only coincide with a supermoon, but also with a blood moon and partial lunar eclipse.
While harvest moons happen each year close to the start of fall and supermoons three to four times a year, all three events taking place at the same time are “quite rare,” astrophysicist Teresa Monsue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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IFS Seminar November 12, 2024: Sebastian Gomez (Harvard)
Time Domain Astronomy in the Era of Big Data
Speaker: Sebastian Gomez (Harvard University)
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 pm
Location: 472 Willamette Hall (IFS Seminar Room)
Abstract: Time domain astronomy, or the study of the dynamic universe on human timescales, stands at the forefront of a revolution fueled by the advent of large surveys. In the past decades we have experienced an unprecedented influx of observations that led to the discovery of exotic transients such as superluminous supernovae and tidal disruption events, and pair-instability supernova
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CERN70: Tasting the primordial soup
18 October 2024
Jürgen Schukraft joined CERN’s heavy-ion programme in 1986 and was the first spokesperson for the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider
Source || Part 19 of the CERN70 Series
On 7 November 2010, lead nuclei collided in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for the first time. In the control room of ALICE, the LHC’s heavy-ion experiment, a celebratory atmosphere reigned. This was the beginning of a new chapter in CERN’s heavy-ion programme, which had started 25 years earlier.
In the 1980s, theoretical work had indicated that high-energy heavy-ion collisions –
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