Strathclyde Physics Society

Hi all!
Come and meet some of our committee tomorrow at the department welcome event!
The welcome event will take place at 11:30am on the 5th floor of the John Anderson building

We will also be at the freshers fair this Tuesday - details will be posted tomorrow!

Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime which travels as a wave towards their source at the speed of light, as proposed by Poincaré in 1905 (see Poincaré 1946, “The foundation of science: science and hypothesis, the values of science and method”) and predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 (See Einstein 1916, “The foundations of the General Theory of Relativity”). Detecting gravitational waves, and analysing the information in which they carry, can allow scientists to observe the Universe in a whole new way. This month’s “What is going on in Physics?” is about a new method of detecting gravitational waves using the varying distances between the Earth and the moon.
Research from the IFAE, UAB and the University College London proposed this new method which has a measurement precision less than a centimeter. Current wave detectors do not have this preciseness.
Although predicted in 1916, the first detection of gravitational waves was in 2015. However, frequencies which current devices cannot cover could be covered by this new natural method. This could aid with the fundamental understanding of our Universe because an example of a signal currently undetectable is microhertz, which could have been produced at the dawn of the Cosmos.
Using lasers sent from observations to reflect upon the moon’s mirrors, the exact position of the moon (within a centimetre) is known. Gravitational waves constantly hit our Earth-Moon system creating small disruptions in the moon’s orbit. This means that, potentially, small disturbances by ancient gravitational waves could be detected.

This research implies that the information from other binary systems could also be used, such as pulsar binary systems. Since these are throughout the Universe, there could be hopes for finding information in the microhertz range, unveiling information from our Universe’s past.

Related papers and articles:
1. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-moon-orbit-gravitational-detector.html?fbclid=IwAR0w9BkO7mwa3HkumW4Oc4vOfZE5YyI7nklrg9ZT1i6-67wX1HLE_vcXwyA
2. https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/natural-gravitational-wave-detector-moons-orbit/19519/
3. https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/why-detect-gw

Image Description: Image 1 is of spirals coming from two spherical masses, showing gravitational waves. Image 2 shows an artistic style image of the moon near Earth. Image 3 shows four graphs which show how the moon's orbit is disturbed by gravitational waves.

What's going on in Physics? February 2022

The 18th of February marked a year since Perseverance touched down on Mars in 2021. Nasa celebrated this anniversary and so this month “what’s going on in Physics?” will note some of Perseverance’s updates throughout it’s year on the red planet. Perseverance’s main job is to seek any signs of ancient life on Mars and to collect rocks, broken rocks, and soil to potentially bring back to Earth. So far, the rover has found new evidence of ancient hot magma, abundant water and organic molecules preserved in rocks and dust. This means that Perseverance has found the building blocks of life on Mars.

In addition to the already hard work of this rover, NASA also release weekly Mars Perseverance “image of the week”. This has given NASA an array of images of our neighbouring planet. These span from sandy mountains, to rocks and even to selfies of the rover!

Alongside Perseverance on Mars is the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, who rode to Mars attached to the belly of Perseverance. This was the first test of a powered flight on not only Mars but any other planet. Alongside this Ingenuity is less than 1.8 kg, is powerful enough to take off in Mar’s especially thin atmosphere, was designed for 30 second flights and flies on its own without human control. This is huge in terms of advancement in technology. Unlike Perseverance (who runs on a nuclear battery) Ingenuity is powered by solar panels which charges enough for potential 90 second flights.

This creates excitement not only for the future of our robots on Mars, but for the future of space exploration and technology.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
https://www.space.com/nasa-perseverance-rover-organics-mars
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/

Today marks the start of the planks 2022 competition. The Physics society committee has a team competing this weekend so keep an eye out for any updates on the event. Good luck to all competing this weekend!

We have a social next Wednesday, the 16th, at 7pm in the Terrace! It would be great to see some of you there 😄

Physics Society GM coming up!! There are currently vacancies in our committee for the following positions: Vice president, Social Convener, Drop-Ins Assistent, 1st year representative, 2and year representative and 3rd year representative. If you are interested in any roles please check them out and fill this form here: https://forms.gle/PCzzSJpi7E9bfBxj8
This meeting will be held on zoom on the 8th of February at 5pm.

All members are welcome to the GM!

Image Description: the Physics society logo, which contains an atom and the words "Stratgclyde Physucs Society" on a white background. Above it states there is a general meeting coming up with vacancies on the committee available. Below it states the time and date of the meeting.

Talk coming up on Wednesday the 9th if February at 5pm: Quantum Computing: Hiw to build a REALLy cool computer by Professor Viv. Kendon. The eventbite link is here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/quantum-computing-how-to-build-a-really-cool-computer-tickets-257007214497

Image Description: a black image with light blue lines and spherical shapes in a flowing look. It says talk in the top left, has the physics society logo in the top right and the event information already detailed in the bottom left.