UBC’s physics and astronomy department was lucky to host Dr. Barry Barish, one of the recipients of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. Barish began his talk by describing that space-time is extremely stiff and hence changes in distance are very small, which is why the observed effects are so small as well.
On this vast Earth, your favourite spot to hang out might be around The Boulevard or The Pit. Your favourite spot to hang out outside of Earth, however, probably shouldn’t be around a dying main sequence star — not unless you want to risk a very tragic end!
While there are no specific requirements stipulating how to format the lay abstracts, Porter is adamant that they should not “dumb down” complicated research, but rather, make it more easily accessible to those without a technical background.
UBC's Donner conducts field research on the island of Kiribati, located in the central pacific off the coast of Australia. This year’s UN conference had a particular focus on small island developing states, such as Kiribati, recognizing the threat that climate change poses to their livelihoods.
To make your first trip around the Universe less overwhelming, let’s start with the top five must sees. Before you begin your journey, make sure you have packed enough food for a lifetime and have a spaceship that can break the cosmic speed limit.
A letter has been sent out to all of humanity, warning us of an impending calamity. The letter voices scientists’ growing concern with climate change and calls for humanity’s participation in curtailing environmental destruction.
These models are based on real data that Clarke and his team of graduate students collected over several decades of field work in the Yukon Territory. However, these operations can be extremely arduous and expensive, and so he hopes that the future of glaciology may involve drone technology.
Planes are flying metal tubes and are pretty close to miraculous. But some people don’t like leaving the miracle of flight as just a miracle. For UBC students, engineering or not, that’s where the AeroDesign team comes in.
On August 24, 2016, Ada, an autonomously sailing robot designed and built by a team of UBC students, set out to be the first boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean completely autonomously. She was lost at sea until December 1, 2017.
The early stages of the universe recently became a little more clear thanks to UBC professor Dr. Gary Hinshaw. Hinshaw and the WMAP team — 27 scientists throughout the US, Canada, and the UK — received the Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics on December 3.
Third-year economics and math student Alberto Cevallos and a group of primarily arts students found themselves facing a challenge last winter; they had ideas about innovative ways to harness emerging technologies but lacked some of the technical expertise and support they needed to develop them.
We’re looking to highlight the writers on campus who dream of crazy futures — the dystopian, utopian or some strange cross of the two.
“I am on-call today, and I have learned that it never hurts to have that extra dash of caffeine before the start of a 24-hour shift. Of course, I have been on-call enough times to know that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ shift.”
UBC professors agree: despite all the good that the Nobel Prize does for the scientific community, the high degree of sexism, racism and homophobia reflected in the history of the chosen Nobel Laureates — whether subconscious or intentional — can no longer go unchecked.
Why is it dark at night? The answer sounds obvious — well of course it’s dark at night, the Sun isn’t up! No, not quite. There are stars in every single direction — light coming from every single point in the sky — so why is it dark at night?