Astrophysics Experimentalist

Bernard Sadoulet

Professor Emeritus

Bernard Sadoulet, a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (1963) and a “Docteur ès sciences” of Paris-Orsay University (1971), is by training an elementary particle physicist. As such, he had the chance of participating in two prestigious experiments which led to Nobel Prizes: the Mark I experiment at SLAC which discovered the J/ψ, the τ lepton and the charm, and UA1 at CERN which discovered the intermediate vector bosons W and Z. In 1984 he decided to shift his efforts towards particle astrophysics and cosmology. In 1985 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of California,...

Reinhard Genzel

Professor Emeritus, Co-Director, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics

Reinhard Genzel received his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn (FRG) in 1978. He came to Berkeley as a Miller Fellow in 1980 and joined the Physics Department faculty as Associate Professor in 1981. He left Berkeley in 1986 to become Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich (FRG) where he is also Honorary Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilian University. In 1999 he came back to UCB as part-time Professor. Awards and Honors include the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society (1979), Presidential Investigator Award (1983), Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the...

LuSEE-Night will attempt first-of-its-kind measurements of the Dark Ages of the Universe.

March 20, 2023

Image of a lunar lander with different components, on the moon

NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) are working together to develop a science instrument that will survive the harsh and unforgiving environment of the lunar surface at night on the far side of the Moon to attempt first-of-its-kind measurements of the Dark Ages of the Universe. The instrument, named the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment – Night (...

Closest supernova in a decade reveals how exploding stars evolve

August 29, 2023

Galaxies in space

The Pinwheel Galaxy, or Messier 101, on May 21, 2023, four days after the light from the supernova 2023ixf reached Earth.

Alex Filippenko is the kind of guy who brings a telescope to a party. True to form, at a soiree on May 18 this year, he wowed his hosts with images of star clusters and colorful galaxies — including the dramatic spiral Pinwheel Galaxy — and snapped...

Saul Perlmutter

Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Professor

Saul Perlmutter is a 2011 Nobel Laureate, sharing the prize in Physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe. He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair, and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is the leader of the international Supernova Cosmology Project, and director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and executive director of the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics. His undergraduate degree was from Harvard and his PhD from UC...

After 15 years, pulsar timing yields evidence of cosmic gravitational wave background

July 3, 2023

Very Large Array telescopes in a row

The universe is humming with gravitational radiation — a very low-frequency rumble that rhythmically stretches and compresses spacetime and the matter embedded in it.

That is the conclusion of several groups of researchers from around the world who are simultaneously publishing a slew of journal articles today (Wednesday, June 28) describing more than 15 years of observations of...

Parker Solar Probe flies into the fast solar wind and finds its source

June 7, 2023

Illustration of Parker Solar Probe approaching the sun

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown close enough to the sun to detect the fine structure of the solar wind close to where it is generated at the sun’s surface, revealing details that are lost as the wind exits the corona as a uniform blast of charged particles.

It’s like seeing jets of water emanating from a showerhead through the blast of water hitting...

M87 in 3D: New view of galaxy helps pin down mass of the black hole at its core

April 13, 2023

Image of a galaxy with a wire grid shape over it illustrating the M87 galaxy

Seen from Earth, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 is just a two-dimensional blob, though one that appears perfectly symmetrical and thus a favored target of amateur astronomers.
Yet, a new, highly detailed analysis of the motion of stars around its central supermassive black hole — the first black hole to be imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope...

Bright gamma ray burst confounds models of black hole birth

March 28, 2023

Diagram of a gamma ray emission emerging from a black hole showing the different types of energy in the afterglow

Last October, following one of the brightest flashes of gamma rays ever observed in the sky, telescopes around the world captured a wealth of data from an event that is thought to herald the collapse of a massive star and the birth of a black hole.

But that fire hose of data demonstrated clearly that...

Stuart Bale

Professor

Stuart D. Bale received B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1989 and 1994, respectively. After three years of postdoctoral work at Queen Mary College, University of London, he came to a research position at the Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) at Berkeley. He joined the Physics faculty in 2004 and is the Director of SSL. He has held visiting appointments at the Observatoire de Paris, Meudon (Univ. Paris VII), LPCE/CNRS in Orleans, France, the University of Sydney, and Imperial College and Queen Mary University London. He is a recipient of the 2003 Presidential Early...