2018 News (redirect to old site)

2021-01-01

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LIGO supercomputer upgrade will speed up groundbreaking astrophysics research

2018-12-01

Penn State recently invested in an upgrade to its portion of the data grid that will roughly quadruple the cluster’s capacity for conducting cutting-edge astronomy and astrophysics research.

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NSF Press Conference on Neutrino-Blazar Discovery

2018-07-12

NSF held a press conference on Thursday, July 12, 2018 to announce the major discovery of the first high-energy neutrino detected from a distant cosmological source. IceCube and AMON researchers at Penn State played a prominent role in this major advance. The result is reported in two articles in the current issue of Science and featured on its cover: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6398. This discovery marks the beginning of a new branch of astronomy using high-energy neutrinos and, since it partly relied on the coincident detection of high-energy photons, places in sharp relief the critical importance of the multimessenger approach pioneered at IGC through our AMON project. An article for lay audiences published in “The Conversation” by Doug Cowen, Derek Fox and Azadeh Keivani was picked up by CNN, CBS News, Smithsonian Magazine, Newsweek and EarthSky and attracted nearly 30,000 reads in the first four days!

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Remembering Stephen Hawking

2018-03-14

Abhay Ashtekar, director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, reflects on Stephen Hawking’s monumental work and remarkable spirit. Eberly College of Science; March 14, 2018.

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About our wordmark
Monica The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez, while she was a graduate student at the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC). Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work includes specialized topics in general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds. In particular, her thesis work focused on finding effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams, and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope and variety of research at the IGC. The base of the image represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity. These are among the approaches to fundamental questions studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle of the image represents the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology by galaxies embedded in a smooth surface, characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the much larger physical scales studied in cosmology. Finally, at the top, the surface curves to an extreme, representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet. These elements depict an active galactic nucleus, inspired by Centaurus A. Just to the right, a pair of black holes approaches merger. This top portion of the wordmark represents the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics, which specializes in the study of high-energy phenomena in the universe.