Physical Sciences

Scientists at UCI’s Irvine Materials Research Institute have made a breakthrough in directly imaging a platinum precursor compound and its dynamic transformation into nanocrystals. The observation was made in real space and time in IMRI’s state-of-the-art transmission electron microscope facility. The research team’s results were published today in Science Advances. Knowing the dynamics and kinetics of materials […]

Soroosh Sorooshian, director of UCI’s Center for Hydrometeorology & Remote Sensing and Distinguished Professor of civil & environmental engineering and Earth system science, has been elected a fellow of the International Union of Geodesy & Geophysics. A renowned expert in water resources engineering, Sorooshian has vast experience working with global organizations and looking at the […]

EVENT:  On Sunday evening, the moon will turn an eerie blood-red, the effect of a total lunar eclipse as Earth’s shadow passes over its surface. UCI’s Department of Physics & Astronomy invites the public to campus for a viewing party and educational event to commemorate this rare astronomical phenomenon. The gathering will feature an informative lecture […]

The ammonia you use to clean and disinfect your kitchen floor starts off as nitrogen, a gas that makes up almost 80 percent of Earth’s atmosphere. But the conversion requires the breaking of a strong triple-chemical bond in a high-heat, high-pressure industrial process. UCI physicist Huolin Xin worked with his colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory […]

Gregory Benford, science fiction author and professor emeritus of physics & astronomy at UCI, is the 2019 winner of the Heinlein Award, bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. The award is in recognition of Benford’s body of work, including 32 novels – among […]

Climate change-induced melting will raise global sea levels for decades to come

Carbon Brief, a website devoted to the analysis of energy policy and climate change science, has published a list of the 10 climate research papers in 2018 that received the most global media attention, and two originated at UCI. The rankings are based on scores tabulated by Altmetric, which tracks and measures exposure of academic […]

To make better predictions about future wildfires around the world, climate scientists want to know the prevalence and intensity of past outbreaks. For a study published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Melinda Nicewonger, a UCI graduate student in Earth system science, examined ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to measure changes […]

Burning of peatlands in Borneo and Sumatra created severe air pollution in region

Huolin Xin, UCI assistant professor of physics & astronomy, has been awarded $2.5 million by the U.S. Department of Energy to advance research in next-generation lithium-ion batteries. His project is one of 42 supported by an $80 million fund for promising vehicle technologies to enable more affordable mobility, strengthen domestic energy security, reduce our dependence […]