Hubble sees double
Grad student Hsiang-Chih Hwang helps refine the technique for identifying quasar pairs, opening the floodgates for the discovery of merging galaxies and revealing more information about galaxy formation and gravitational waves By Rachel Wallach / Published April 28, 2021
Astrophysicists know that just about every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. They know that when galaxies merge, so, ultimately, do their black holes. But they don t yet know much about how the merging process occurs, or exactly what happens to the supermassive black holes during it.
That s because there haven t been many examples to study. Scientists search for supermassive black holes by looking for quasars, the brilliant objects formed when supermassive black holes feed on bits of matter, which emits copious radiation as it falls into the black hole. Most galaxy mergers happened 10 billion years ago, and when looking tha
Field geologist Emmy Smith awarded Sloan Research Fellowship
The fellowship recognizes her for her scientific research, which takes place at ancient geological sites around the world
Image caption: Emmy Smith Feb 22, 2021
Emmy Smith likens her work to being a detective. The mysteries she unravels? Roughly 500 million years of Earth s history.
Smith, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, is a field geologist and sedimentologist who specializes in the Neoproterozoic and Cambrian periods roughly one billion years ago to 500 million years ago. In this vast, ancient expanse of time, the Earth underwent a series of profound transformations: geochemical and climate changes including at least one period of rising atmospheric oxygen and two complete glacial periods (so-called snowball Earths); tectonic shifts that broke up the prehistoric supercontinent, Rodinia; and the evolution and divers
By Rachel Wallach / Published Jan 20, 2021
When Betty Boop first appeared in 1930, the iconic cartoon character quickly began making her mark far beyond her celluloid world, eventually lending her influence to art, music, and fashion, as well as other animations.
The Jazz Age character also both parodied and reflected her times, a short-lived era in which it seemed nothing much could go wrong. She can get into terrible things, but with a little flip of her hips, she gets out of it, says Karen Yasinsky, lecturer in the Program in Film and Media Studies at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Peter Privalov, father of the field of biological microcalorimetry, dies at 88
The longtime Hopkins research professor, who joined the university in 1991, laid the theoretical groundwork and developed the technology for measuring the heat released during protein folding within a cell By Rachel Wallach / Published Dec 23, 2020
Peter Privalov, research professor in the Department of Biology at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and a founding father of the field of biological microcalorimetry, died of lymphoma on Sunday, Dec. 20. He was 88.
Throughout his career, Privalov focused on the physical principles of the architecture of biological macromolecules: proteins, nucleic acids, and their complexes. Specifically, he studied the energetics of formation of their three-dimensional structures, which are the forces stabilizing their structure, the mechanism of cooperation of these forces, and their interaction with the su