Winter 2016

02/06/2016 | How Volkswagen Got Caught Cheating -- John German (International Council on Clean Transportation)

Since vehicle emission standards were introduced over 45 years ago, manufacturers have optimized vehicles and emission control systems around the testing requirements while government agencies keep updating the requirements to try to make sure the reductions also occur in the real world. Emission control systems have become vastly more sophisticated and efficient over the years, and so has the software, making it more difficult to detect if manufacturers are cheating on the official tests. Volkswagen stepped over the line in order to reduce the cost and fuel economy tradeoffs with diesel engine NOx controls and they were caught due to a relatively new innovation - a miniaturized emission lab that fits in the trunk of the car.

02/13/2016 | Gravitational Waves: Einstein's Audacious Prediction -- Keith Riles (U-M Physics)

A hundred years ago, Einstein realized that his General Theory of Relativity implies that gravity propagates like light. These gravitational waves are minute disturbances that can arise from distant but violent events, such as collisions of black holes or the steady hum of a spinning neutron star. The nature of these tiny ripples will be described, along with what their detection could tell us about the exotic objects that emit them.

02/20/2016 | The Hunt for Gravitational Waves: Was Einstein Right? -- Keith Riles (U-M Physics)

Einstein thought gravitational waves were too weak ever to be detected. But now, on the centennial of his prediction of them, scientists working on the project called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) believe we now have the sensitivity required to "hear" these tiny and elusive signals. Using giant "microphones" consisting of 4-km-long laser cavities in Washington and Louisiana, LIGO is listening intently to the Universe. Has anything gone bump in the night?

03/12/2016 | Higgs and the Beginning of the Universe -- Bibhushan Shakya (U-M Physics)

One of the most astounding implications of the recent discovery of the Higgs boson and its measured properties is that the vacuum we live in is metastable: there exists a different vacuum structure that is energetically more favorable for the Universe to reside in. This aspect becomes crucial during the period of cosmological inflation in the early stages of the Universe, when the tremendous energy density in the Universe tends to trigger transitions into the alternate vacuum. This would have resulted in a catastrophic collapse of the entire Universe. What saved us? What are we missing? What can we learn from this?

03/19/2016 | The Dark Side of the Universe -- Katherine Freese (U-M Physics)

The ordinary atoms that make up the known Universe, from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars, constitute only 5% of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The remaining 95% is made up of a recipe of 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy, both nonluminous components whose nature remains a mystery. Professor Freese will recount the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Fritz Zwicky, the Swiss astronomer who coined the term "dark matter" in 1933, to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. She will provide an overview of this cosmic cocktail, including the evidence for the existence of dark matter in galaxies. Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving this mystery, and this talk will provide the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind's quest to understand the Universe.

03/26/2016 | Black Holes, Spintronics, and Time-Reversal Symmetry -- Anthony Charles (U-M Physics), Marta Luengo-Kovac (U-M Physics), Natasha Sachdeva (U-M Physics)

Graduate students in the Physics Department at the University of Michigan study all sorts of problems, on both large and small scales. Anthony Charles, Marta Luengo-Kovac, and Natasha Sachdeva will talk about their research, spanning from black holes to single electrons.

04/02/2016 | Strategies for Promoting Learning in the STEM Classroom -- Anne McNeil (U-M Chemistry)

Research in education has converged on a number of effective strategies for engaging students and promoting learning. Leveraging these tools effectively is challenging because it requires a major overhaul of our existing courses and instructional strategies. Professor Anne McNeil will talk about efforts underway at U-M toward building better STEM courses by incorporating these new learning strategies, focusing on her own experiences while piloting a new chemistry laboratory course.

04/09/2016 | Photographing the Ghostly Neutrino -- Joshua Spitz (U-M Physics)

You can't see them but they're everywhere. About 65 billion just passed through your fingernail in the past second. Indeed, the neutrino is the most ghostly of our fundamental particles. We've known about the existence of neutrinos for over 80 years, and yet their mysterious nature continues to confound us. This talk will discuss the importance of the neutrino in particle physics and cosmology and present how one can actually photograph a neutrino. No Ouija board required.