Physical Sciences

Chemistry faculty launch antiviral research project

Scientists combine their diverse skills in collaborative effort to hobble COVID-19

East Antarctica’s Denman Glacier has retreated almost 3 miles over last 22 years

UCI, NASA scientists assess ice sheet with potential to raise global sea levels nearly 5 feet

Greenland shed ice at unprecedented rate in 2019; Antarctica continues to lose mass

UCI, NASA JPL project tracking Earth-sensing satellite turnover yields striking results

UCI astronomer and colleagues confirm existence of exoplanet orbiting nearby star

Using the Habitable Zone Planet Finder instrument, a team of scientists – including UCI astronomer Paul Robertson – has confirmed that an object previously detected by the Kepler space telescope is an exoplanet, a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. The team’s findings were published recently in The Astronomical Journal. Called G 9-40b, […]

Astronomers discover once-productive galaxy that fizzled out in early universe

An international team of astronomers, including a researcher from UCI’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, has found an ultramassive galaxy as it existed more than 12 billion years ago. Galaxy XMM-2599 was extremely productive early on – hatching more than 300 billion suns by the time the universe had its 1 billionth birthday (it’s now […]

Contradicting prevalent view, UCI oceanographers predict increase in phytoplankton

Machine learning Earth system model projects growth in lower latitudes by 2100

UCI, other researchers find collaborative flood modeling process effective

Community involvement, high-resolution maps lead to improved risk management

UCI chemists find fungal shrapnel in the air

In a discovery that has implications for our understanding of the air we breathe, UCI chemists report that they’ve found nanoscale fragments of fungal cells in the atmosphere. The pieces are extremely small, measuring about 30 nanometers in diameter, and much more abundant than previously thought, the researchers say in a study published this week […]

Exoplanet hunting instrument created in part by UCI astronomer makes first observations

UCI astronomer Paul Robertson recently celebrated “first light” for NEID, a new exoplanet hunting instrument he helped develop. Installed at the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, NEID is an extremely precise radial velocity spectrometer. Its initial observations were of 51 Pegasi, a sunlike star that, in 1995, was […]

Greenland ice loss is at ‘worse-case scenario’ levels, study finds

UCI glaciologists play key roles on international assessment team