Nicholas Hadley Elected Fellow of AAAS

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Category: Department News

Published: Thursday, December 18 2008 15:45

Nicholas Hadley, Professor and Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 486 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, 14 February from 8 to 10 a.m. at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.

As part of the Section on Physics, Dr. Hadley was elected as an AAAS Fellow for his leadership role in the discovery of the top quark and his contributions to searches for phenomena beyond the standard model of particle physics.

Dr. Hadley joined the University of Maryland as an Associate Professor in 1988. He is an experimental physicist working in the field of High Energy Physics (HEP). Skilled in the development and construction of detectors for the primary observation of charged and neutral particles, he has been very successful in data analysis and physics interpretation of HEP data. He did important work at Brookhaven on rare decays of “strange” particles, published the first paper at the Fermilab Dzero experiment on “leptoquarks,” and spearheaded the analysis efforts at Dzero that led to the discovery of the top quark at Dzero in 1995. He is internationally recognized for his many important leadership roles in the large collaboration of physicists and technical personnel that constitute an active HEP physics experiment, having been on the program advisory committees of Brookhaven and Fermilab, among other leadership positions

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the Association’s 24 sections, or by any three Fellows who are current AAAS members (so long as two of the three sponsors are not affiliated with nominee’s institution) , or by the AAAS chief executive officer. For more information regarding the non-profit AAAS, visit www.aaas.org .

MILAGRO Detects Cosmic Ray Hot Spots

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Category: Research News

Published: Monday, November 24 2008 14:51

The University of Maryland-led Milagro collaboration, comprised of scientists from 16 institutions across the United States, has discovered two nearby regions with an unexpected excess of cosmic rays. 

This is the second finding of a source of galactic cosmic rays relatively near Earth announced in the past week. In the November 20 issue of the journal Nature, ATIC an international experiment lead by LSU scientists and conceived by a University of Maryland physicist announced finding an unexpected surplus of cosmic-ray electrons from an unidentified, but relatively close source.

“These two results may be due to the same, or different, astrophysical phenomenon, said Jordan Goodman, a University of Maryland professor of physics and principal investigator for Milagro. However, they both suggest the presence of high-energy particle acceleration in the vicinity of the earth. Our new findings [published in the November 24 issue of Physical Review Letters] point to general locations for the localized excesses of cosmic-ray protons observed with the Milagro observatory.

Cosmic rays are actually charged particles, including protons and electrons, that are accelerated to high energies from sources both outside and inside our galaxy. It’s unknown exactly what these sources are, but scientists theorize they may include supernovae -- massive stars that explode -- quasars or perhaps from other even more exotic, less-understood sources within the universe. Until recently, it was widely held that cosmic-ray particles came toward Earth uniformly from all directions. These new findings are the strongest indications yet that the distribution of cosmic rays is not so uniform.

When these high energy cosmic ray particles strike the Earth's atmosphere, a large cascade of secondary particles are created in an extensive “air shower.” The Milagro observatory, located near the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, 'sees' cosmic rays by observing the energetic secondary particles that make it to the surface.

Jordan and his Milagro colleagues used the cosmic-ray observatory to peer into the sky above the northern hemisphere for nearly seven years starting in July 2000. The Milagro observatory is unique in that it monitors the entire sky above the northern hemisphere. Its design and field of view, made it possible for the observatory to record over 200 billion cosmic-ray collisions with the Earth’s atmosphere.

This allowed researchers for the first time to see statistical peaks in the number of cosmic-ray events originating from relatively small regions of the sky. Milagro observed an excess of cosmic ray protons in an area above and to the right of Orion, near the constellation Taurus. The other hot spot is a comma-shaped region in the sky near the constellation Gemini.

“Whatever the source of the protons we observed with Milagro, their path to Earth is deflected by the magnetic field of the Milky Way so that we cannot directly tell exactly where they originate,” said Goodman. “And whether the regions of excess seen by Milagro actually point to a source of cosmic rays, or are the result of some other unknown nearby effect is an important question raised by our observations.”

Even more revelatory observations of cosmic rays and further help solving the mystery of the origin of cosmic rays may come in the form of a new observatory that Jordan and his fellow U.S. Milagro scientists have partnered with colleagues in Mexico to propose to the National Science Foundation. This second-generation experiment named the High Altitude Water Cherenkov experiment (HAWC) would be built at a high-altitude site in Mexico.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded construction of the Milagro through the University of Maryland. The observatory’s work was funded by NSF, the US Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the University of California. For more information on Milagro and HAWC, visit the University of Maryland HAWC website: http://hawc.umd.edu or contact Jordan Goodman (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Brenda Dingus (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

In Science News: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/40759/title/Cosmic_mystery

Dorland Awarded the 2008 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship

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Category: Department News

Published: Friday, November 21 2008 12:59

Associate Professor Bill Dorland was awarded the 2008 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which recognizes outstanding personal effort and expertise in physics, and dedicated service to the UMD Department of Physics . The Fellowship, established in 2001, honors Dr. Richard A. Ferrell, a deeply-respected physicist who joined the University in 1953, served 40 years, and remained active in the department even after his retirement. Dr. Ferrell died in 2005 at his nearby University Park home.

Dorland is a member of Maryland’s Plasma Physics research group, which US News and World Report ranked No. 2 in the nation. He has been a principal investigator for $8 million in research grants and is also the current Director of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics.

In January, he will begin serving as the University Honors Director. For more information, please see, “Award Winning Physicist to Lead Honors Program,” on page 5 of The Advisor.

Hall Awarded the 2010 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship

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Category: Department News

Published: Friday, November 21 2008 12:59

Assistant Professor Carter Hall has received the 2010 Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, which recognizes outstanding personal effort and expertise in physics, and dedicated service to the UMD Department of Physics . The Fellowship, established in 2001, honors Dr. Richard A. Ferrell, a deeply-respected physicist who joined the University in 1953, served 40 years, and remained active in the department even after his retirement. Dr. Ferrell died in 2005 at his nearby University Park home.

Professor Hall researches the fundamental nature of neutrino mass and the physics of dark matter.