Recipient of the WSU Crimson Spirit Award for October 2017 is Tom Busch, a fiscal analyst in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Nominators praised him for noteworthy extra efforts and consistently exceeding expectations, and commended his in-depth knowledge of policies and procedures. Busch is the “go-to” person for help and advice for grant proposal […]
A new study by Washington State University researchers answers longstanding questions about the formation of a rare type of diamond during major meteorite strikes. Hexagonal diamond or lonsdaleite is harder than the type of diamond worn on an engagement ring and is thought to be naturally made when large, graphite-bearing meteorites slam into Earth. Scientists […]
Brian Collins, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has received one of only 59 national Early Career Research awards from the U.S. Department of Energy for 2017. Around 700 scientists from across the country applied for the award. The five-year, $750,000 grant will support Collins and his team of graduate and undergraduate students in their […]
A new device being developed by Washington State University physicist Yi Gu could one day turn the heat generated by a wide array of electronics into a usable energy source. A multi-component, multi-layered composite material called a van der Waals Schottky diode, the WSU device converts heat into electricity up to three times more efficiently […]
Mother Nature provided a special treat for the first day of classes at Washington State University this year: a total solar eclipse across all of the United States. Although the path of totality ran from the Oregon coast all the way through South Carolina, the Vancouver, Tri-Cities, and Pullman campus each experienced more than 93% […]
Three billion years ago in a distant galaxy, two massive black holes slammed together, merged into one and sent space–time vibrations, known as gravitational waves, shooting out into the universe. The waves passed through Earth and were detected early this year by an international team of scientists, including WSU physicists Sukanta Bose, Bernard Hall and […]
Parts of Washington state will be treated to an extraordinary show during what NASA is calling the “Great American Eclipse” on Aug. 21, even though the sun won’t completely disappear. As the total eclipse cuts a swath across neighboring Oregon and Idaho, some locations in the state will enjoy a “deep partial eclipse,” said astronomer […]
Washington State University physicists have found a way to write an electrical circuit into a crystal, opening up the possibility of transparent, three-dimensional electronics that, like an Etch A Sketch, can be erased and reconfigured. The work, to appear in the on-line journal Scientific Reports, serves as a proof of concept for a phenomenon that […]
When it arrives on campus this fall, a powerful new $1.7 million x-ray microscope will help Washington State University scientists develop specialized materials for technologies such as self-healing roads, printable batteries and super-efficient solar cells. WSU will be the first U.S. university to have the ZEISS Xradia Ultra 810’s state-of-the-art, 3D imaging capabilities.
Washington State University physicists have created a fluid with negative mass, which is exactly what it sounds like. Push it, and unlike every physical object in the world we know, it doesn’t accelerate in the direction it was pushed. It accelerates backwards. The phenomenon is rarely created in laboratory conditions and can be used to […]