News/Events

West Virginia University was well represented by both current and former Mountaineers at the 2021 Fall NANOGrav Collaboration meeting last week at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  The meeting was held October 13-15, 2021 and included scientific talks, special guest speakers, poster sessions, and panel discussions.

Working alongside industry data scientists and data engineers, Di Pang was immersed in a world where he could apply his knowledge and expertise in data sciences in a new way.

Over the summer, the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy hosted eight undergraduate students in research programs with the goal of attaining astrophysics research experience through faculty-led mentoring and hands-on training. 

Magnetar outbursts are one of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. Steady outflow of ejected particles from magnetars, known as magnetar wind nebulae, are rare and how these outbursts impact their environment is still an open question. Researchers at WVU have found the first evidence of the effects of magnetar outbursts on a compact nebula surrounding a young radio pulsar.

Over a period of time, between 2018 and 2019, researchers made the discovery of 535 new fast radio bursts, adding great excitement to field of cosmology and astrophysics. The discovery was made using the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope in Canada.  The scope of this discovery is immense given that only 150 fast radio bursts (FRBs) had been previously discovered, in all. 

The large stationary radio telescope CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, has detected 535 fast radio bursts between 2018 and 2019, during its first year of operation. West Virginia University engineer Kevin Bandura explained FRBs are a key to understanding the universe a little bit more.

Normally when you visit the WVU Planetarium and Observatory, you take your seat and wondrously peer up at the dome with anticipation; the lights dim, and the dome lights up.