Physics And Astronomy

Following the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, Vanderbilt astronomer Keivan Stassun leads the next phase of discovery to find atmospheres like our own. Read More

On a quest to find the Universe’s largest black holes, Vanderbilt researcher identifies the center of the solar system within 100 meters. Read More

Six alumni—Bruce Heyman, John Hindle, Scott Hubbard, Paul Kurtz, Richard McCord and Mary Margaret Oliver—are the newest members of the Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame. Read More

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt will offer fall classes about life on Mars, the 2018 midterms, American gun culture, and an Oz Arts production on human connections to the environment. Read More

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy honored two Vanderbilt researchers for STEM mentorship. Read More

In subatomic collisions, physicists have found the signature of primordial cosmic soup, from which all the stuff in the universe formed, at lower energies and in smaller volume than ever before. Read More

Matthew Feldman, a graduate research assistant in physics and astronomy, is one of only 195 students nationwide who have been awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow Read More

The university community marked the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse with campus viewing parties, conducted research and prepared for the big day with months of educational and creative programming. Read More

Scientists have discovered a natural process that makes patterned monolayers suitable for creating a wide variety of novel materials with dual optical, magnetic, catalytic or sensing capabilities. Read More

For the first time, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt is offering a series of classes taught by Fisk University faculty on the Fisk campus. Read More

Astronomers at Vanderbilt and Ohio State have discovered a planet like Jupiter zipping around its host star every day, boiling at temperatures hotter than most stars with a giant cometary tail. Read More

Vanderbilt astrophysicist Jedidah Isler has joined Beyoncé, LeBron James and Serena Williams as a member of The Root’s 100 List of Black Influencers. Read More

The National Science Foundation has issued its first-ever awards for the NSF INCLUDES program, a comprehensive initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science and engineering by broadening participation in STEM fields. Principal investigator Maithilee Kunda and co-P.I. Kelly Holley-Bockelmann are among the recipients. Read More

U.S. Representative Jim Cooper honored nuclear physicists Joe Hamilton and A.V. Ramayya Aug. 12 for their role in the discovery of the new superheavy element 117 that has been provisionally named Tennessine. Read More

Astronomers have discovered an unnamed pair of stars that sets a new record for both the longest duration stellar eclipse (3.5 years) and longest period between eclipses (69 years) in a binary system. Read More

Astronomer Keivan Stassun has received "INSIGHT into Diversity" magazine's 2015 Diversity Visionary Award, called "the only national individual honor in higher education of its kind." Read More

Physicist Tom Weiler talks about time travel on an upcoming episode of Discovery Science Channel's "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman." Read More

In his new blog “Cosmic Yarns,” Robert Scherrer, who is both chair of the Astronomy and Physics Department and a published science fiction author, explores the intersection between science and science fiction. Read More

Astronomer Davy Kirkpatrick (Courtesy of Davy Kirkpatrick) If Davy Kirkpatrick’s calculations stand up, then Vanderbilt will have solid connections to two of the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbors. One link is long standing. Barnard’s star, which is six light years away from the Sun and its second-closest… Read More