News
School of Physics and Astronomy
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June 19, 2019
The Milky Way Has Battle Scars from Colliding With a Ghostly Galaxy
Discover magazine features Sukanya Chakrabarti, associate professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, and her research on the recently-discovered dwarf galaxy Antlia 2.
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June 18, 2019
A 'Ghost Galaxy' May Have Given the Milky Way Its Signature Swirl
Though direct observational evidence of Antlia 2 was not obtained until last year, one scientist has had a decade-long hunch that it was there. Sukanya Chakrabarti, an astrophysicist at RIT predicted in 2009 that an object packed with dark matter was causing tidal effects at the edge of the Milky Way.
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June 18, 2019
Milky Way Collided with Dark-Matter Dominated Galaxy Less Than Billion Years Ago
Sci-News features new research, led by RIT, that shows the collision of the recently-discovered dwarf galaxy Antlia 2 with the Milky Way Galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago is responsible for ripples in the Milky Way’s outer gas disk.
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June 14, 2019
Scientists detected signs of our Milky Way colliding with another 'ghost' galaxy
Antlia 2, the "ghost of a galaxy" orbiting the Milky Way, is a dark horse in more ways than one. Not only is it so faint it was only just discovered last year, it may now be responsible for curious ripples in the hydrogen gas that makes up the Milky Way's outer disc.
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June 12, 2019
New evidence shows crash with Antlia 2 gave the Milky Way the ripples in its outer disc
The newly-discovered dark dwarf galaxy Antlia 2’s collision with the Milky Way may be responsible for our galaxy’s characteristic ripples in its outer disc, according to a study led by Assistant Professor Sukanya Chakrabarti. The Antlia 2 dwarf galaxy was discovered from the second data release of the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which aims to chart a three-dimensional map of our galaxy.
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May 22, 2019
Handsworth grad examines inner workings of outer space with NASA project
Assistant Professor Michael Zemcov interviewed by North Shore News for his part in contributing to NASA’s new mission to explore the origins of the universe by performing the first near-infrared all-sky spectral survey.
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May 16, 2019
Laser for sound promises to measure extremely tiny phenomena
Guest essay co-written by
, associate professor of physics and astronomy, published by The Conversation. -
May 6, 2019
Physics student Elyse Rood poised for career doing problem-solving engineering for medical software
Before Elyse Rood started working on her senior physics capstone project, she didn’t envision herself working for a software company. But after the commencement ceremony on May 10, she is moving to Madison, Wis., to start a career as a technical solutions engineer at a healthcare software company called Epic Systems.
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May 2, 2019
A “Laser for Sound” from a Levitated Nanoparticle
Optics and Photonics News features work by Mishkat Bhattacharya, associate professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
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April 23, 2019
RIT researchers help conduct experiment to study how the first stars and galaxies formed
While many people flock to warm destinations for spring break, two RIT experimental cosmologists spent theirs 6,800 feet high on snow-covered Kitt Peak at the Arizona Radio Observatory. They were deploying an instrument to a 12-meter telescope for a project called the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME), which aims to study the universe’s first stars and galaxies.
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April 16, 2019
Rochester community invited to learn about star constellations at RIT Observatory April 22
The Rochester Institute of Technology Observatory is hosting an open house to teach members of the Rochester community how to identify constellations, the patterns of stars in the sky that mark the figures of heroes, monsters, and characters from ancient myths.
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April 15, 2019
Researchers Develop New Form of Laser for Sound
R&D Magazine talks to Mishkat Bhattacharya, associate professor of physics, about his research to create a laser for sound.