Physics Department News

Published in the journal Nature, a team including Warwick astronomer Peter Wheatley has discovered a giant comet-like tail of hydogren gas evaporating from a Neptune-sized exoplanet. The gas is thought to be boiled off by X-rays from the parent star and then swept away by radiation pressure. The tail was revealed in Hubble Space Telescope observations in which 56% of the star is covered by the tail in ultraviolet light. The planet is losing its atmosphere at a rate of 1000 metric tonnes per second, having narrowly escaped total evaporation by the intense X-ray irradiation it suffered when its parent star was young and active. Read the Warwick press release, the full journal article in Nature, or the preprint from ArXiv.

Congratulations to Robb Johnston for winning the inaugural Papin Prize for “Contribution to Infrastructure” at the 2015 Higher Education Technician Summit, which celebrated the skills, talent and experience of technicians from M5 Universities. The Papin prizes recognise the invaluable role played by technicians and are named after Denis Papin, a 17th century technician who worked with Robert Boyle and was one of the first technicians to publish in his own name.

Robb was nominated by the department for the longstanding contribution he has made to Physics.

Professor Valery Nakariakov has been awarded the 2015 Payne-Gaposchkin medal and prize by the Institute of Physics for his leadership and major contribution to the discovery of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) activity of the solar corona. His research has led to transformative changes in our understanding of the solar atmosphere, and to the creation and successful implementation of a new branch of solar physics - MHD coronal seismology.

This award is named after Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin who was the first person to show that the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, contradicting accepted wisdom at the time. It is made biennially by the IOP for distinguished research in plasma, solar or space physics.

Congratulations to Yorck Ramachers for being nominated and commended for this year’s Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence. He is one of 10 commendees who has been awarded a prize of £2,000, through the department, to be used to support teaching and learning activities. For more information please visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/ldc/personal/funding/wate/