News

Rich and Linda Turco

A Joy That is Hard to Describe

“We soon understood the wonderful feeling you get when you see students thriving, and hearing their stories. When you can speak with them face-to-face and learn about their lives and their work.”

John and Lauren Liberati

A Million Grains of Sand to Make a Beach

Six years ago, when John and Lauren Liberati were establishing an endowment to support graduate students in the physics department, they had one caveat: they didn’t want to give any criteria for how the recipient was chosen.

As NEOWISE Comes to an End, NEO Surveyor Prepares for Launch

After more than a decade of mapping the sky, NASA’s NEOWISE telescope, the Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, was officially decommissioned last week. During its nearly 15-year run, NEOWISE observed the cosmos at infrared wavelengths and collected data on more than 740 million objects, including stars, galaxies and potentially hazardous asteroids. But the mission that...

Image of planets and non-planetary bodies of the solar system, with each group clustered together.

How to define a planet

UCLA Professor proposes a new definition of planets with more specific criteria.