UWM Report: Student Space Experiments, Gravity in Extreme Conditions
Students and faculty members from the UW-Milwaukee Physics Department have recently been featured in several stories published in the UWM Report.
With Help from NASA, Students Launch Experiment into Space: The UWM Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) team recently took part in NASA’s and the Colorado Space Grant’s RockSat-C program, which allows student groups to design their own experiments and send them up on one of the space agency’s rockets for a fee. The launch takes place during NASA’s annual Rocket Week, where students from across the country gather to present their experiments before their projects take off. The SEDS team is made up of undergraduate students from various backgrounds and disciplines, including several physics majors.
Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Holds Even in Extreme Conditions: The observations of a triple-star system seems to confirm that Einstein’s theory of general relativity holds up even for objects with extreme mass. In a paper recently published in Nature, researchers detailed 6 years of observations of a triple star system called PSR J0337+1715, consisting of a neutron star in a 1.6-day orbit with a white dwarf. This pair is in a 327-day orbit with another white dwarf farther away. Associate Professor David Kaplan, as part of this team, explains the implications of this research in the linked article.