News from the UBC Physics and Astronomy Department


	van Waerbeke & Heymans "see" dark matter For the first time, astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale ever observed. Catherine Heymans and Ludovic Van Waerbeke of UBC presented their analysis of the gravitational lensing of about 10 million galaxies in four regions of the sky to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas on 2012-01-08. The analysis reveal a Universe... read more...
	T2K gets 7th in the top ten Physics breakthroughs - 2011 Physics World annually lists the top ten breakthroughs in physics research. In their recently announced 2011 list, seventh place is awarded to the international team of physicists (including a number here at UBC & TRIUMF) working on the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment in Japan. The researchers generate a beam of muon neutrinos at J-PARC (Japan Proton... read more...
	SCUBA-2 submillimetre camera sees first light The 4.5-tonne SCUBA-2 (Submillimetre Common User Bolometer Array) camera, unveiled today as part of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, will survey wavelengths invisible to optical cameras and capture unprecedented information about the formation of stars. SCUBA-2 was built in collaboration with Canadian, U.S. and Dutch... read more...
	Rose wins innovator award Former P&A PhD graduate Dr Geordie Rose will be present with Innovator of the Year Award of the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX). Geordie is co-founder & CTO of D-Wave Systems Inc. and is being recognized for his ambitious approach to building quantum computing technology.In selecting the Innovator of the Year, CIX recognized the key milestones... read more...
	Affleck is awarded the Lars Onsager prize Congratulations to Ian Affleck who has been chosen as the next recipient of the Lars Onsager Prize. This major prize of the American Physical Society is awarded for outstanding research in theoretical statistical physics including quantum fluids. This award recognizes Ian's pioneering role in developing and applying the ideas and methods of conformal field... read more...
	Quantum decoherence Stamp'ed ? A major advance in predicting and quashing environmental decoherence, a phenomenon that has proven to be one of the most formidable obstacles standing in the way of quantum computing has been made at UBC & UC Santa Barbara. UBC's Philip Stamp has been able to theoretically predict and hence control, all the environmental decoherence mechanisms in a very... read more...
	New T2K Results Hint At Previously Unseen Type of Neutrino Oscillation The Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) neutrino experiment announced new results today which hint that muon neutrinos produced by a particle accelerator can transform into electron neutrinos as they travel across a long distance. The T2K experiment uses a beam of muon neutrinos produced at the J-PARC accelerator laboratory in eastern Japan. These neutrinos are beamed... read more...
	Gordon Semenoff gets Honorary Degree from Lethbridge Gordon Semenoff has been awarded an honorary degree from the University of Lethbridge at their Spring Convocation in June 2011. The Doctor of Science, honoris causa, recognises Gordon as an expert on quantum field theory. Gordon has been a professor at UBC since 1990. He is noted for his co-invention of the parity anomaly in odd-dimensional gauge field... read more...
	How long can you hold your antimatter? 1000 seconds answers the alpha team ( including a number of Canadian researchers) in an article published in Nature Physics. ALPHA is an international collaboration (including UBC's Walter Hardy and Andrea Gutierrez ) based at CERN, and whose aim is stable trapping of antihydrogen atoms, the antimatter counterpart of the simplest atom, hydrogen. Now that... read more...
	MOST data lead to description of densest known planet The MOST satellite has detected transits by the inner most planet of orbiting the star 55 Cancer. Analysis of the data combined with previously published doppler measurements of the star, lead to a description of a "rocky planet that is as dense as lead and where a year lasts less than 18 hours". Uncertainty as to the correct orbital period of the innermost... read more...