A set of highly detailed images of 19 nearby spiral galaxies from NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have been publicly released today. The suite of extraordinary images will provide several new puzzle pieces for astronomers and astrophysicists around the world.
Neptune is fondly known for being a rich blue and Uranus green \u2013 but a new study has revealed that the two ice giants are actually far closer in colour than typically thought. The research, led by Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford\u2019s Department of Physics, has been published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Oxford will be the international headquarters for the Breakthrough Listen initiative, the largest ever astronomical programme searching for \u2018technosignatures\u2019 - evidence of past or present technology that would signal the presence of life beyond planet Earth.
A global team of scientists led by researchers in the Department of Physics have announced the results of an unprecedented collaboration to search for the source of the largest ever seismic event recorded on Mars. The study rules out a meteorite impact, suggesting instead that the quake was the result of enormous tectonic forces within Mars\u2019 crust.
A thermal imaging camera built by the Department of Physics will form an integral part of NASA\u2019s Lunar Trailblazer mission, scheduled to launch in 2024. This aims to map the distribution of the different forms of water on the surface of the Moon to better understand the lunar water cycle and inform future human missions.
For the first time, researchers have trained a machine learning model in outer space, on board a satellite. This achievement could enable real-time monitoring and decision making for a range of applications, from disaster management to deforestation.
One of the most celebrated cosmologists of our time, Professor Joseph Silk (now Emeritus Savilian Professor in the Department of Physics) has made seminal discoveries on the early evolution of the Universe, the nature of dark matter and how we may detect it, and galaxy formation.
The NASA James Webb Space Telescope discovers of four of the most distant galaxies found to date \u2013 confirmed using key instruments developed by the instrument science team with Oxford physicists.
A new study involving Department of Computer Science researchers has found that artificial intelligence could accelerate the search for extraterrestrial life by showing the most promising places to look.
In November 2021, a team of graduate students from Oxford teamed up with the International Space School Educational Trust (ISSET) to turn the ideas of secondary school children into real experiments for launch to the International Space Station.
New findings confirm that Webb has surpassed the Hubble telescope in its ability to observe the early Universe as an international team of astronomers, including scientists from Oxford, has today reported the discovery of the earliest galaxies ever confirmed in our Universe.
University of Oxford academics have contributed to the most comprehensive molecular and chemical analysis of an exoplanet\u2019s atmosphere, enabled by new data from NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Following two large meteorite impacts on Mars, near-surface seismic waves have been recorded for the first time on a planet other than Earth. The data, analysed by an international team involving University of Oxford researchers, has revealed valuable new information about the structure of the Martian crust.
Oxford Physics is part of the international team analysing data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which has captured the first definitive detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system.
Eleven MPLS researchers have been recognised in this year\u2019s MPLS Impact Awards, which showcase research impact across the division and help us to identify examples of impact excellence that will help us to prepare the ground for future Research Excellence Framework (REF) submissions and similar exercises.
Ten years ago, on 4 July 2012, an international collaboration of particle physicists announced to the world that they had independently observed a new particle \u2013 the Higgs boson. Oxford physicists were key contributors to the discovery and have continued to play a leading role in Higgs-boson research ever since.
An international team of scientists, including Professor Rob Fender, Dr Ian Heywood and Dr Jakob van den Eijnden from the University of Oxford, have discovered a strange radio emitting neutron star, which rotates extremely slowly, completing one rotation every 76 seconds.
Six institutions, including the University of Oxford, are leading efforts to deliver computational systems that will enable the world\u2019s largest radio telescope
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