Dept News

Claire Thring (PhD student in the Ultrasound Group) has been awarded the R.W.B. Stephens Prize at the 2017 International Congress on Ultrasonics, which was held in Honolulu, Hawaii, Dec 18-20th 2017. The prize is given in recognition of outstanding work in ultrasonics and the excellent presentation of the results, and is sponsored by Elsevier and the journal Ultrasonics.

Setting crisps on fire, making spinach glow, and detonating hundreds of ping pong balls were just some of the experiments the children attending Warwick’s Christmas lectures were treated to this year.

Mind boggling optical illusions, giant glow sticks, drill-powered umbrellas, and hundreds of bubbles also featured in the interactive shows.

Ally Caldecote, who organised of the events said: “It was great to demonstrate some exciting live science to local children and their teachers, group leaders and families. We also really enjoyed meeting some young scientists and having them up on stage helping us with our experiments.

“We are always delighted at the enthusiasm for these events and this year we were able to take to the stage at Warwick Arts Centre’s biggest theatre and were thrilled to be sold out.”

Both shows in Warwick’s annual science extravaganza were performed to capacity audiences at the Butterworth Hall. More than 500 tickets at the two events were booked free of charge by local schools, youth groups, Cubs, Brownies, Scouts and Guides.

Understanding gravity in the framework of quantum mechanics is one of the great challenges in modern physics. Along this line, a prime question is to find whether gravity is a quantum entity subject to the rules of quantum mechanics. It is fair to say that there are no feasible ideas yet to test the quantum coherent behaviour of gravity directly in a laboratory experiment. In a recent paper, Gavin Morley and colleagues introduce an idea for such a test based on the principle that two objects cannot be entangled without a quantum mediator.

Warwick Astronomers have joined the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V), making Warwick the first UK institution to be formally part of the project. Within SDSS-V, Boris Gaensicke will lead a spectroscopic survey of all stars within 100pc of the Earth - encompassing 350,000 systems, many of which are likely to host planetary systems.