Astronomers have solved a 21-year-old cosmic mystery with the discovery of a star whose companion exploded, confirming that the surviving star was partly responsible for the resulting supernova. A team of 12 scientists, including the University of Chicago’s Vikram Dwarkadas, recently published the discovery in the Astrophysical Journal. (more…)
UChicago collaboration unveils African dinosaur Spinosaurus, 9 feet longer than T. rex
Scientists have unveiled what appears to be the first truly semiaquatic dinosaur, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. New fossils of the massive Cretaceous-era predator reveal it adapted to life in the water some 95 million years ago, providing the most compelling evidence to date of a dinosaur able to live and hunt in an aquatic environment. (more…)
New Fermilab experiment will test the nature of the universe
A unique experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory called the Holometer has started collecting data that will answer some mind-bending questions about our universe—including whether we live in a hologram. (more…)
By carefully controlling the position of an atomic-scale diamond defect within a volume smaller than what some viruses would fill, researchers have cleared a path toward better quantum computers and nanoscale sensors. They describe their technique in a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing. (more…)
Since joining the University of Chicago faculty in 2010, Hillary Chute quickly established herself as the campus’ resident comics expert. In addition to co-teaching a course on comics and autobiography with famed cartoonist Alison Bechdel, Chute organized a conference through the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, which brought together the world’s leading cartoonists for three days of public conversation. The events of that conference are documented in a special issue of the journal Critical Inquiry, which Chute co-edited with colleague Patrick Jagoda, assistant professor in English Language and Literature and the College. (more…)
Soul singer Betty Everett once proclaimed, “If you want to know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss.” But a new study by University of Chicago researchers suggests the difference between love and lust might be in the eyes after all.
Specifically, where your date looks at you could indicate whether love or lust is in the cards. The new study found that eye patterns concentrate on a stranger’s face if the viewer sees that person as a potential partner in romantic love, but the viewer gazes more at the other person’s body if he or she is feeling sexual desire. That automatic judgment can occur in as little as half a second, producing different gaze patterns. (more…)
A new study of sharks that lived in warm Arctic waters millions of years ago suggests that some shark species could handle the falling Arctic salinity that may come with rising temperatures.
The Arctic today is best known for its tundra and polar bear population, but roughly 38 to 53 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, the Arctic was like a huge temperate forest with brackish water, home to a variety of animal life, including ancestors of tapirs, hippo-like creatures, crocodiles and giant tortoises. Much of what is known about the region during this period comes from well-documented terrestrial deposits. Marine records have been harder to come by. (more…)
Birds come in astounding variety—from hummingbirds to emus—and behave in myriad ways: they soar the skies, swim the waters and forage the forests. But this wasn’t always the case, according to research by scientists at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum.
The researchers found a striking lack of diversity in the earliest known fossil bird fauna—a set of species that lived at about the same time and in the same habitat. “There were no swans, no swallows, no herons, nothing like that. They were pretty much all between a sparrow and a crow,” said Jonathan Mitchell, a PhD student in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology and lead author of the new study, published May 28 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (more…)
