Department of Physics and Astronomy

Image of the star, Janus. It's a cerulean blue-coloured star with one side darker with some visible spots and the other lighter side.

Star with two faces discovered thousands of light years from Earth

With one side composed fully of hydrogen and the other of helium, the star has been dubbed Janus after the two-faced Roman god of transition, and described in a new study published in Nature today.

Jul 19, 2023

Euclid spacecraft, Credit: ESA/Work performed by ATG under contract for ESA., CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Canadian scientists celebrate launch of Euclid satellite

Mission will explore the evolution of the dark Universe.

Jul 1, 2023

Artist’s interpretation of an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational ripples produced by a supermassive black hole binary in a distant galaxy. Photo credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav Collaboration.

Changes in the tick of ‘cosmic clocks’ reveal gravitational waves

Using part of the Milky Way as an antenna, researchers have found evidence for gravitational waves that undulate over periods of years to decades by measuring changes in the tick of ‘cosmic clocks.’

Jun 28, 2023

Astronomers double the number of repeating cosmic probes

A Canadian-led research team has doubled the number of repeating fast radio bursts, adding 25 new ‘cosmic probes’.

Apr 26, 2023

UBC Physics Olympics in 2019. Photo credit: Theresa Liao

Event: High school students compete in 45th annual UBC Physics Olympics

For the first time since 2019, more than 600 high school students, teachers and coaches from across B.C. will assemble in person on the UBC Vancouver campus for the UBC Physics Olympics, one of the largest and longest-running high-school physics competitions in North America.

Mar 1, 2023

Infrared echoes of a black hole eating a star illustration. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Time machines and black holes on the agenda at quantum gravity meeting

A theory of everything, that works at a cosmic and quantum level, has eluded researchers for years.

Aug 12, 2022

Atlas V Rocket Launches with Juno Spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

Space rocket junk could have deadly consequences unless governments act

The re-entry of abandoned stages of rockets left in orbit from space launches have a six to 10 per cent chance of severely injuring or killing a human being in the next decade, according to a new UBC study.

Jul 12, 2022

Credit: Andre Renard, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto; CHIME Collaboration.

Canadian telescope detects 500 fast radio bursts in a year, quadrupling number of known FRBs

The CHIME telescope detected 535 new fast radio bursts during its first year of operation – from 2018 and to 2019 – quadrupling the number of known occurrences of the puzzling pulses of radio energy from far outside our galaxy.

Jun 9, 2021

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope measures the oldest light in the universe, known as the cosmic microwave background. Using those measurements, scientists can calculate the universe’s age.
Credit: Debra Kellner

New insights into the origins of our universe

New data released today by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile indicate our universe is around 13.8 billion years old.

Jul 15, 2020

Sizes of the 17 new planet candidates, compared to Mars, Earth, and Neptune. The planet in green is KIC-7340288 b, a rare rocky planet in the Habitable Zone. Credit: Michelle Kunimoto

UBC student discovers 17 new planets, including potentially habitable, Earth-sized world

UBC astronomy student Michelle Kunimoto has discovered 17 new planets, including a potentially habitable, Earth-sized world, by combing through data gathered by NASA’s Kepler mission.

Feb 28, 2020

Astronomers discover new distant dwarf planet beyond Neptune

An international team of astronomers including researchers from the University of British Columbia have discovered a new dwarf planet orbiting in the disk of small icy worlds beyond Neptune.

Jul 11, 2016

Researchers propose new way to chart the cosmos in 3D

If only calculating the distance between Earth and far-off galaxies was as easy as pulling out the old measuring tape.

Sep 18, 2015

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation boosts ultra-fast quantum materials research at UBC

Researchers at UBC will be able to probe the mysteries of quantum materials with a new state-of-the-art ultrafast laser, thanks to a $1.4 million US grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

May 26, 2015

Glimpse of early galaxy formation captured for the first time

Hidden within images of some of the oldest light in the universe, researchers have identified what they believe are scenes of galaxies clumping together into massive structures known as galaxy clusters.

Mar 31, 2015

Astronomers use vanishing neutron star to measure space-time warp

In an interstellar race against time, astronomers have measured the space-time warp in the gravity of a binary star and determined the mass of a neutron star, just before it vanished.

Jan 8, 2015