News

In this episode of the Point of Discovery podcast, we're celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the periodic table. Join us as we tour the cosmos, from the microscopic to the telescopic, with four scientists studying the role of four elements—zinc, oxygen, palladium and gold—in life, the universe and everything.

As computers advance, encryption methods currently used to keep everything from financial transactions to military secrets secure might soon be useless, technology experts warn. Reporting today in the journal Nature, a team of physicists and engineers led by University of Texas at Austin physics professor Xiaoqin Elaine Li report they have created a material with light-emitting properties that might enable hack-proof communications, guaranteed by the laws of quantum mechanics.

What's it like for a scientist to work as an advisor on a major Hollywood film? In this first of a two-part conversation, Kip Thorne talks with his former graduate student Bill Press about the impact that a film like Interstellar can have on the public, balancing scientific accuracy and entertainment and what winning the Nobel Prize really says about a scientists' worth. (BTW, Interstellar star Matthew McConaughey is also a UT Austin alum and [update as of August 2019] member of the faculty.)

Over the past few decades, the cost of storing data on hard disk drives (HDDs) has fallen dramatically, enabling revolutions in personal, scientific and cloud computing and allowing for storage of ever-greater amounts of data. But even as data collection continues to skyrocket, the cost-per-bit trend has been flattening out, leading to calls for new innovations in technology.

Whether you're looking for a gift for a science enthusiast or proud Longhorn in your life, or you're just seeking your next relaxing read, this roundup of recent books by or featuring members of the Texas Science community will come in handy.

The scientists looking for gravitational waves report that last year they observed four additional ripples in space-time. During about a nine-month period, scientists involved with the National Science Foundation's LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) collaboration and the European-based Virgo gravitational-wave detector encountered eight gravitational waves—twice as many as previously reported—including a newly identified binary black hole that was the most precisely located in the sky to date.

The Texas Student Research Showdown, a competition open to undergraduate researchers at UT Austin across all disciplines and majors, featured a number of winning entries from College of Natural Sciences and Freshman Research Initiative students this year. For this contest, students submit a two minute YouTube video to effectively communicate their research projects while competing for recognition and cash prizes worth up to $2,500.

The University of Texas at Austin will be a key player in LaserNetUS, a new national network of institutions operating high-intensity, ultrafast lasers. The overall project, funded over two years with $6.8 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, aims to help boost the country's global competitiveness in high-intensity laser research.

Over the last six years, faculty, staff and students from across the College of Natural Sciences have submitted hundreds of images from their scholarly research for our annual Visualizing Science competition, and these images have been viewed by tens of thousands of people. The submitted images, often beautiful and stunning, are the ones that spoke to their creators, inspiring and informing them as they followed their scientific passions.

With the new academic year in full swing, there are some new faces around the College of Natural Sciences. Meet the 20 new tenured and tenure-track faculty members, whose expertise ranges from astrophysics to nutrition to mathematics.