Author: hpanzic

“Two athletes square off for an intense dance battle. The DJ starts spinning tunes, and the athletes begin twisting, spinning and seemingly defying gravity, respectfully watching each other and taking turns showing off their skill.

The athletes converse through their movements, speaking through a dance that celebrates both athleticism and creativity. While the athletes probably aren’t consciously thinking about the physics behind their movements, these complex and mesmerizing dances demonstrate a variety of different scientific principles.

Breaking, also known as breakdancing, originated in the late 1970s in the New York City borough of the Bronx. Debuting as an Olympic sport in the 2024 Summer Olympics, breaking will showcase its dynamic moves on a global stage. This urban dance style combines hip-hop culture, acrobatic moves and expressive footwork.

Since its inception, breaking has evolved into a competitive art form. An MC narrates the movements, while a DJ mixes songs to create a dynamic atmosphere. The Olympics will feature two events: one for men, called B-boys, and one for women, called B-girls. In these events, athletes will face off in dance battles.”

Credit: Amy Pope and Clemson News

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Paris 2024 Olympics to debut high-level breakdancing — and physics in action | Clemson News

A little over three decades ago, the only planets we could confirm were the ones in our solar system. But with the advent of more powerful telescopes on the ground and new observatories in space, scientists have since discovered the existence of thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars other than our sun. According to Janus Kozdon, a graduate student in the Clemson University Department of Physics and Astronomy, the vast majority of the observed exoplanets orbit older stars, with very few found orbiting young stars, who are still forming protoplanetary disks from gas and dust. Kodzon says detecting planets in these young systems is challenging because the disk can obscure the planet’s signature. Kodzon and his team developed a novel technique to study planets surrounding young stars through disk morphology, which he plans to the June American Astronomical Society meeting in Madison, Wisconsin.

Kodzon’s research, published in the Astronomical Journal in August 2023, focuses on CI Tau, a young star located about 523 light-years away, where an exoplanet was already discovered within its protoplanetary disk. Observing CI Tau for nine nights, Kozdon used spectroscopy and his custom model to analyze carbon monoxide in the disk, revealing its two oppositely oriented components. The findings from this research provided the first empirical evidence of disk eccentricities potentially caused by the embedded planet. Sean Brittain, Clemson’s associate provost and dean of undergraduate learning; Jeffrey Fung, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy; and physics graduate students Stanley Jensen and John Kern also worked on the project. This work sheds light on planet-disk interactions and opens new avenues for studying forming planets around young stars.

Researchers/collaborators from the University of Maryland, the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, and Texas State University were also involved in the research.

Credit: David Brandin

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Clemson grad student’s study sheds light on planet formation in infant stars | Clemson News

Three Clemson University astrophysicists, Pablo Penil del Campo and Nuria Torres-Alba, postdoctoral fellows, and Stefano Marchesi, an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, have been awarded more than $1 million combined in highly competitive grants through the NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program to study active galactic nuclei, their obscuring material, and variability and periodicity. Penil will study four blazars that show periodic gamma-ray emissions, using a decade of NASA data to investigate whether these patterns indicate a binary system of supermassive black holes, which could provide new insights into galaxy evolution. Marchesi and Torres-Alba are using NASA’s X-ray telescope data to study dense, cosmic gas environments around supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies, where energetic X-ray photons penetrate gas, allowing researchers to characterize black hole properties and surrounding structures. Marchesi and Torres-Alba are also studying how efficiently supermassive black holes grow by consuming surrounding gas and how this process impacts their nearby and distant environments, providing insights into extreme cosmic phenomena. Marchesi and Torres-Alba are using machine-learning methods developed by Ross Silver and Xiuri Zhao, former graduate students at Clemson, to analyze a vast dataset of X-ray observations, aiming to create the largest sample of obscuration-variable supermassive black holes and gain new insights into black hole structures.

Credit: David Brandin

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Three Clemson astrophysicists get NASA Data Analysis Program grants totaling over $1 million | Clemson News

In our universe, only about 15% of matter is known or seen, while the remaining 85% is known as dark matter, a substance that remains largely unexplained by scientists. Circiello, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University, recently presented his research at the American Physical Society’s April meeting, one of the largest conferences in the field. He explained that dark matter is confirmed to exist through its gravitation effects, despite its elusive nature. Circiello emphasized that since dark matter significantly influences cosmic structures and dynamics, understanding this type of matter is key to solving some of the universe’s largest secrets. The research Circiello presented built on that done by colleague Alex McDaniel, which explored new ways by which to detect dark matter, often through looking at nearby, dark-matter-dominated galaxies.

Credit: David Brandin

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Gamma-rays and galactic mysteries: Clemson astrophysicist studies dark matter’s secrets | Clemson News

Clemson Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor, Feng Ding, and his international collaborators “have discovered a cause of blood vessel damage in the brain that plays a role in Alzheimer’s disease-related dementia.”

Clemson University researcher Feng Ding and his collaborators have identified a mechanism behind blood vessel damage in the brain that contributes to Alzheimer’s-related dementia. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, shed light on how amyloid beta oligomers—byproducts of amyloid precursor protein—damage the blood-brain barrier. This disruption allows amyloid plaques to form on blood vessel surfaces, a condition present in 95% of Alzheimer’s patients.

The study reveals that amyloid beta oligomers break into nanoparticles that compromise endothelial cell junctions, creating holes in the blood-brain barrier. This damage not only affects neuronal function but also causes extensive vascular harm, offering a potential target for new Alzheimer’s therapies. The research, supported by NIH, provides critical insights into the interplay between amyloid aggregation, vascular health, and neurodegeneration.

Credit: David Brandin

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Research reveals cause of vascular changes associated with early Alzheimer’s  | Clemson News

Three members of Rao’s lab- Mihir Parekh, postdoctoral fellow, and graduate students Janak Basel and Nawraj Sapkota have discovered a way to optimize electrolytes to address the short circuiting and rapid capacity loss problems in sodium-ion batteries. These batteries are less expensive and more readily available than lithium-ion batteries. 

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Electrolyte research by Clemson physicists could lead to cheaper high-capacity batteries. | Clemson News

After analyzing more than 100 years of data, Clemson University astrophysicists, Pablo Penil del Campo, Marco Ajello, and Sagar Adhikari, may have found binary supermassive black holes. 

In our universe, galaxies collide with other galaxies and, in the process, the supermassive black holes at the core of the galaxes will form a pair. 

“Penil and his collaborators studied five blazars. He found that PG 1553+113, which Penil described as the most well-known blazar in the context of periodicity behavior, exhibited evidence of a 2.2 quasi-periodic oscillation in radio, optical, ultraviolet (UV) and gamma-ray bands.”

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Using a century of data, Clemson astrophysicists may have found a binary supermassive black hole | Clemson News

VJ Mattison and J Jones, undergraduate students in the Physics and Astronomy Department, presented their research at the CU2MIP. CU2MIP is the Conference for Undergraduate Underrepresented Minorities in Physics.

They presented their poster titled “Advancing Blazar and Galactic Source Identification with Multiwavelength and Machine Learning”.

Our very own physics undergraduate student, Maggie Marte, is one of the 5 students at Clemson University that have been awarded the Goldwater scholarship. The 2024 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship recognizes students who show exceptional promise of advancing research in mathematics, natural sciences and engineering. This scholarship provides recipients with $7,500 in financial support towards their undergraduate studies and associated expenses for up to two years. 

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Five Clemson students awarded prestigious 2024 Goldwater scholarships | Clemson News

On April 8th, 2024, the Clemson University department of Physics and Astronomy hosted an eclipse event, and it was a huge success! There was so much happening on campus and so many fun stations for both the Clemson Community and the public. There was eclipse science taking place in the planetarium, presentations on general relativity, pinhole cameras, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and telescope viewing. News reporters from Fox 8 and WYFF News were filming live throughout the day. The department provided eclipse glasses for safe viewing and started the event with 4000 eclipse glasses and ran out! Over 4000 people came to see the eclipse on campus!

None of this would have been possible without the help of our faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students. Thank you to everyone who came out and to our lovely volunteers.