Physics Department News
Thermonuclear blast sends supernova survivor star hurtling across the Milky Way
An exploding white dwarf star blasted itself out of its orbit with another star in a ‘partial supernova’ and is now hurtling across our galaxy at 900.000km/h, according to a new study led by Boris Gänsicke from the Warwick Astronomy and Astrophysics group, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It opens up the possibility of many more survivors of supernovae travelling undiscovered through the Milky Way, as well as other types of supernovae occurring in other galaxies that astronomers have never seen before. Have a look at the Warwick press release press release and the paper for free on arXiv.
T-ray camera speed boosted a hundred times over
Scientists are a step closer to developing a fast and cost effective camera that utilises terahertz radiation, potentially opening the opportunity for them to be used in non-invasive security and medical screening.
A research team led by Professor Emma MacPherson and involving scientists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong has reached a crucial milestone towards developing single-pixel terahertz imaging technology for use in biomedical and industrial applications.
Revealing the Magnetic Nature of Tornadoes in the Sun’s atmosphere
In a study to be published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, a collaboration between the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), the University of Warwick and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) has achieved the first three-dimensional tomography of the magnetic fields in a solar tornado and have measured their faint polarimetric signals.
The constant motions of the Sun’s surface creates giant tornados in the chromosphere a few thousand kilometers in diameter. Like their name sakes on Earth they carry mass and energy high up into the atmosphere and are therefore keenly studied as energy channels to explain the extraordinary heating of the solar corona. The main building block of solar tornados are tangled magnetic fields. This work presents the first direct observation of the chromosphere magnetic field to reveal the magnetic nature of solar tornados. Read more
New diagnostic tool for rapid detection of Coronavirus being developed by University of Warwick and Partners
Coronavirus diagnostics currently require centralised facilities and collection/distribution of swabs and results are ‘next day’. A new diagnostic tool being developed by the University of Warwick and its partner Iceni Diagnostics may allow on-the-spot detection of Coronavirus infection, without facilities using a simple disposal device.