Three Meter Sphere Arrival

Below is a time-lapse video, sapnning 1.5 days, of the arrival of the 3-meter sphere. Professor Dan Lathrop and his team are establishing the world's largest experiment designed to duplicate the earth as a self-generator of a magnetic field.

Greg Sullivan Selected as Ice Cube Spokesman

Greg Sullivan has been selected as spokesman for Ice Cube: South Pole Neutrino Detector. Construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory was completed at the South Pole in Antarctica on December 18, 2010 New Zealand time. This scientific milestone marks completion of the world's largest neutrino detector, and a powerful tool for exploring the Universe.

Maxwell's Demon in the Quantum World

Maxwell's Demon is a theoretical construct introduced by James Clerk Maxwell in an attempt to understand the microscopic foundations of the second law of thermodynamics. Maxwell's thought experiment points to a subtle relationship between thermodynamics and information, and has provided food for thought for generations of physicists. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in this topic, in part due to advances in experimental tools for manipulating nanoscale systems. The Viewpoint essay by  Alumnus Jordan Horowitz, '10, and  Juan Parrondo discusses a Physical Review Letter on the interplay between Maxwell's demon and quantum mechanics, highlighting the effects introduced by the quantum statistics of fermions and bosons. This research elegantly combines information theory, the second law of thermodynamics and quantum behavior.

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UMD-PERG Cited as Exemplary Research Group in Science's Education Forum Section

Howard Hughes Medical Institute professors, in their article Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities (Science, 14 January, 2011, v331, p152-153), cite the University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group as one of few groups integrating basic education research with efforts to improve undergraduate science education.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/152.full