Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation

News

  • Workshop on gravitational-wave Bayesian parameter estimation with PyCBC Inference 14 – 16 May 2019 In this workshop we will provide an introduction to gravitational-wave Bayesian parameter estimation, with specific focus on the PyCBC Inference toolkit. PyCBC Inference is a python-based parameter estimation tool for gravitational wave astronomy. It has been used in several publications to date, involving both multimessenger astrophysics, and tests of general relativity. The goal ...
  • The Hunt for Enormous Early Stars The Hunt for Enormous Early Stars
  • Special issue “Modified Gravity” in International Journal of Modern Physics D The special issue “Modified Gravity: Progresses and outlook of theories, numerical techniques and observational tests” edited by Baojiu Li and Kazuya Koyama has been published in the International Journal of Modern Physics D. IJMPD has generously offered to make the articles freely accessible until the end of February 2019, at https://www.worldscientific.com/toc/ijmpd/27/15. The DOIs for the ...
  • 30th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in Portsmouth this December We are pleased to announce that the 30th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics will take place from Sunday 15th to Friday 20th December 2019 in Portsmouth, UK. The Texas meetings have covered topics such as black holes, gravitational waves, neutron stars, cosmic rays, dark matter and the early Universe since the first symposium, held in Dallas in 1963. The Symposium will include both invited ...
  • Researchers make vital contribution to new gravitational wave discoveries Researchers make vital contribution to new gravitational wave discoveries
  • South Coast Cosmology @ ICG The ICG will be hosting the next South Coast Cosmology meeting on 16th January 2019 in Lecture Theatre 3, Richmond Building (see https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/maps-and-directions for travel information, Richmond is labelled 6 on the map). Registration is via this online form. Participants are welcome to submit abstracts for talks, and we especially encourage PhD students to do so ...
  • ICG Cosmologists provide new measurement of cosmic controversy Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have come up with a new measurement of one of the most debated topics in cosmology. Three cosmologists from the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation analysed new data to provide one of the most accurate measurements of the Hubble Constant to date. Blanco telescope and star trails (Reidar Hahn, Fermilab) The ...
  • ICG researchers in Beijing ICG researchers in Beijing Several ICG researchers attended the 4th CosKASI-ICG-NAOC-YITP workshop on Frontiers of Cosmology. This is the fourth workshop organised by the four institutes. This time, the workshop was held at National Astronomical Observatories of China in Beijing. There were around 60 participants including many Chinese students. The programme of the workshop can be found ...
  • ICG research project featured in European Union research and innovation magazine ICG researcher’s project supported by the European Research Council (ERC) has been highlighted in the EU research and innovation magazine “Horizon”: ‘Space telescope to test Einstein’s theories about gravity’ The ERC funded project “CosTesGrav” led by Prof. Koyama aims to develop cosmological tests of gravity and seek solutions to the origin of the observed accelerated expansion of ...
  • A successfull time with summer student projects The hot weather could not melt the enthusiasm of our placement and internship students. In the week July 16-25 Samuel Richardson from UTC Portsmouth and Dominic Hanley from Oaklands catholic school have worked with ICG PhD student Pierandrea Guarnieri under the supervision of Profs. Maraston and Thomas, on determining the robustness of redshift determinations, in ...
  • How we proved Einstein right on galactic scales – and what it means for dark energy and dark matter In 1915 Albert Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity (GR) to explain how gravity works. Since then GR has passed a series of high precision tests within the solar system, but there have been no precise tests of GR on large astronomical scales.By combining data taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European ...
  • Helping visually impaired children to ‘feel’ the Universe A University of Portsmouth project is helping blind and visually impaired children to ‘feel’ the Universe. The Tactile Universe has been developed by the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation to engage the blind and visually impaired community with astrophysics research. It involves a series of 3D printed images of galaxies that allow blind and visually impaired children to ‘see’ ...
  • Cosmic Stroll Today, during the annual “Faculty of Technology Research and Innovation Conference” a new virtual reality app was presented, the Cosmic Stroll. The app is for free and is compatible with Android 7.0 and up (although support for version 6 is coming soon!). The  Cosmic Stroll app will allow you to have a virtual walk in the real cosmos! ...
  • Dancing the Universe workshop Last Wednesday we had the ‘Dancing the Universe’ workshop. 17 young people between the ages of 11 and 15 went to Priory school, Portsmouth, to learn about space and how to create space-themed dances. Dr. Violeta Gonzalez-Perez, from our institute, talked about Gravity, Galaxies and the Expansion of the Universe. Professional dancer Grace Hall, from ...
  • Physics football raises £290 for charities University of Portsmouth undergraduate physics students and lecturers and researchers from the Faculty of Science and the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation have raised £290 for charity in a staff vs students football match. The money raised has been donated to the mental health charity Mind and local charity Pompey in the Community. The two teams met at the ...
  • BritGrav18 in Portsmouth BritGrav18 @ Portsmouth The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) at the University of Portsmouth played host to the annual BritGrav meeting on Wednesday 18 April and Thursday 19 April 2018. More than 70 researchers from around the UK and Ireland enjoyed the talks and warm sunshine on the South Coast. The meeting brought together young researchers working on all aspects of gravitational physics, ...
  • Donald Lynden-Bell: a tribute It seems an obvious fact that galaxies formed through gravitational collapse. And we all know that quasars are powered by accretion onto supermassive black-holes. But perhaps not everyone knows whom we owe this knowledge to. Donald Lynden-Bell passed away in February 2018. Since the beginning of my studies I was intrigued by the notion of ...
  • ICG students win EU travel funding Hedda Gressel and Natalie Hogg, both PhD students with Marco Bruni at ICG, have been awarded a grant by the EU-COST Action CANTATA (Cosmology and Astrophysics Network for Theoretical Advances and Training Actions), a COST Network that Marco has contributed to create. With this funding  Hedda is visiting collaborators in Geneva (Switzerland) for a week, ...
  • Big turnout for night of science and stargazing This story has been adapted from a news item that appeared on the University of Portsmouth website. 800 stargazers visited Portsmouth Historic Dockyard two weeks ago to learn about the wonders of the universe and take a tour around the night sky. Those who turned out for the sixth annual Stargazing at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard event had ...
  • BritGrav18 is coming to Portsmouth [18-19 April 2018] BritGrav18 @ Portsmouth The 18th BritGrav meeting will be hosted by Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) at University of Portsmouth. The meeting will span two days, Wednesday 18 April and Thursday 19 April 2018. The aim is to bring together young researchers working on all aspects of gravitational physics. Following the BritGrav tradition, the meeting will consist of ...
  • RAS Eddington Prize awarded to Prof Claudia Maraston We are delighted to announce that Prof Claudia Maraston has been awarded the 2018 Eddington Medal for Astronomy by the Royal Astronomical Society for ‘investigations of outstanding merit in theoretical astrophysics’. Claudia has published theoretical models for the expected energy emission and mass of galaxies including innovative prescriptions of stellar evolution, which raised strong interest and ...
  • Black hole research could aid understanding of how small galaxies evolve This news item is slightly edited from a University of Portsmouth press release, and a Sloan Digital Sky Survey press release.  Research led led by ICG researcher Samantha Penny has found evidence that supermassive black holes prevent stars forming in some smaller galaxies, extending out understanding of how dwarf galaxies evolve. The results, presented at the 231st meeting of the American ...
  • Celebrating Prof David Matravers at 80 ICG today celebrated the Prof David Matravers’ 80th birthday with talks from Prof Roy Maartens (University of Portsmouth and the University of the Western Cape) and Dr Karim Malik (Queen Mary, University of London) about David and his work. David Matravers is the founding father of cosmology research at Portsmouth. He came to Portsmouth as head of ...
  • ICG stars in the SEPnet Public Engagement Awards On Wednesday 29th of November, ICG researchers enjoyed a very successful night at the annual SEPnet Public Engagement Awards The awards, and the evening ceremony, are a great opportunity to showcase the amazing work we all do in promoting our research and engaging with the public. Often this work requires much dedication and hard-work, and these ...
  • Portsmouth astronomers offer cosmic fun at Night Sky Live Reproduced from the University of Portsmouth website: Astronomers from the University of Portsmouth will be on hand to answer a galaxy of cosmic questions at Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium this weekend. Scientists from the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) will offer their expertise at Night Sky Live – a two-day festival focusing on galaxies, ...
  • Euclid:UK meeting comes to ICG Portsmouth (Dec 18-19) The annual meeting of the Euclid:UK consortium comes to ICG Portsmouth this year. The meeting will be located in the Portland Building (near the ICG) over December 18th and 19th 2017. More details of the meeting and how to register can be found on the meeting webpage https://eucliduk.net/uk-meeting-2017/ Everyone in the UK community is free to ...
  • Highly cited ICG papers ICG researchers continue to publish highly cited papers. Between 2010 and 2014, Kazuya Koyama, Claudia Maraston, Will Percival and Daniel Thomas have all published first-author papers that are now within the top 1% of highly cited astronomy papers during this period (using statistics from the Astrophysics Data System). For example, Claudia Maraston’s paper on “Star formation rates and ...
  • South Coast Cosmology meeting 2017 in Portsmouth announced South Coast Cosmology meeting 2017 in Portsmouth announced
  • Andy Lundgren: New Reader in Gravitational Waves This week, the ICG welcomes a new member of staff Andy Lundgren. As a new Reader in Gravitational Waves, Andy kick-starts our new initiative in gravitational wave science; helping to bolster the G in ICG! Andy joins us from the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik  Hannover and leads the detection characterisation of LIGO. Here is ...
  • Cosmic Gold: Portsmouth researchers herald new era of gravitational wave astronomy Today, the ICG came together to enjoy the announcement of the LIGO+VIRGO detection of colliding neutron stars in the galaxy NGC4993, only 130 million light years away. As shown in the photo below, the whole ICG watched the official NSF press conference to celebrate this great discovery   What makes this event even more incredible is the ...
  • Astronomy on Tap #4: The History of The Universe Astronomy on Tap – Portsmouth, UK returns with a fun filled evening on The History of The Universe! Come and join us from 7.15pm on 22nd November at the Kings Pub, Albert Road, Southsea. We have talks by two ICG scientists who are experts in their field: Dr Violeta Gonzalez-Perez: From the Greeks to First Light and Mr Robert Hardwick: From First ...
  • Summer 2017 Research at the ICG For the summer of 2017 ICG hosted five different summer undergraduate placements, three focused on scientific research, and two on public engagement with research. The projects for 2017 were: SEPnet placements: Thomas Divers (Southampton Undergraduate), Modelling the galaxy clustering of the DES and eBOSS surveys, with Dr Santiago Avila Virginia d’Emilio (RHUL Undergraduate), Reconstructing the history of the ...
  • Map of the cosmos ‘sees’ the dark Universe Scientists from University of Portsmouth have helped to create the most accurate map of the structure of dark matter in the Universe, supporting the theory that dark energy and dark matter make up most of the Universe. For the first time, scientists from the international Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration, including Dr David Bacon from the ...
  • Mapping super massive black holes in the distant Universe Astronomers have constructed the first map of the Universe based on the positions of supermassive black holes, which reveals the large-scale structure of the Universe. The map precisely measures the expansion history of the Universe back to when the Universe was less than three billion years old. It will help improve our understanding of ‘Dark Energy’, ...
  • ICG @15 June 22nd to 24th, 2017 The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation is 15 years old this year and we plan to celebrate with an event to bring together past and present students, staff and visitors. We will hold a series of talks, seminars and a family barbecue this June. A summary of our schedule and talks: Thursday, 22nd ...
  • UK cosmology meeting @ Portsmouth Registration is now open for UK Cosmology meeting at Portsmouth on Wednesday 5th April 2017. https://www.icg.port.ac.uk/uk-cosmo-at-portsmouth-2017/ You can submit a title and abstract if you would like to contribute a talk. In case we cannot accommodate all contributors, priority will be given to people who did not talk in the last UK Cosmo meetings. Submissions of contributions ...
  • Budding astronomers explore wonders of Universe Edited from a story on the University of Portsmouth website: Astronomers of all ages explored the wonders of the Universe thanks to a Stargazing event in Portsmouth last week. University of Portsmouth astronomers hosted the event at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on Tuesday 31st January 2017 and over 600 people visited despite the misty skies and rain. The ...
  • Cosmologists explore quantum gravity in the early universe This news item is slightly edited from a University of Portsmouth press release, which also appears on phys.org. Cosmologists trying to understand how to unite the two pillars of modern science – quantum physics and gravity – have found a new way to make robust predictions about the effect of quantum fluctuations on primordial density waves, ripples in ...
  • Visually impaired people helped to ‘see’ Universe This news item is slighted edited from a University of Portsmouth press release. Visually impaired people were able to ‘see’ the Universe this weekend at a galaxy workshop run by University of Portsmouth astrophysicists. The Tactile Universe pilot event was organised by the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation to engage the blind and visually impaired (BVI) ...
  • Booking open for free Tactile Universe public event for the vision impaired community Booking is now open for the first Tactile Universe public engagement event on Saturday 14th January 2017. This event will provide an opportunity for people with vision impairments to engage with the galaxy research carried out at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation. On Saturday January 14th 2017, the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and ...
  • British ESA astronaut and University Alumnus Tim Peake visits Portsmouth Two weeks ago, British ESA astronaut Tim Peake visited Portsmouth to participate in events organised by the University of Portsmouth and the UK Space Agency. Taking place on the 1st and 2nd November 2016, the daytime events celebrated the educational programme of Tim’s Principia mission, while a public event was held in the evening of ...
  • Oscar Winner Chris Lawrence visits ICG to explain Visual Effects of ‘Gravity’ and ‘The Martian’ Chris Lawrence, VFX Supervisor for the London-based company Framestore specializing in producing visual effects for film and advertising,  made a recent visit to the ICG to give a talk at one of the institute’s weekly seminars.  In his talk, Chris explained how he and his team created the spectacular visual effects and imagery for the ...
  • ICG Great South Runners Raise over £800 for Guide Dogs Six members of the ICG ran the 10 Mile Great South Run this past Sunday in aid of Guide Dogs. Collectively they raised over £800 pounds for this organization.  Donations for this good cause are still being accepted through the ICG South Run Team Justgiving Page. Well done to all who ran, and why not join ...
  • Cosmic mystery solved by new map of giant voids and superclusters A team of astrophysicists at the University of Portsmouth have created the largest ever map of cosmic voids and superclusters in the Universe, which helps solve a long-standing cosmological mystery. The map of the positions of voids – large empty spaces which contain relatively few galaxies – and superclusters – huge regions with many more galaxies ...
  • For Ada Lovelace Day: ICG Member Answers “What if there were more women in tech?” Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of the often neglected contributions women have made, and continue to make in science and technology. ICG astrophysicist, Dr. Karen Masters is quoted in this BBC article by Zoe Kleinman written for Ada Lovelace Day which asks: “What if there were more women in tech?“ Dr. Masters responded: “In astronomy there’s a ...
  • ESA astronaut Tim to talk to Portsmouth public Update 16:00 12th October – the first batch of tickets is sold out. More tickets will be released through eventbrite at 12.30pm on 19th October.  From the University of Portsmouth Press Office: Astronaut and University of Portsmouth alumnus Tim Peake will attend a free public event to be hosted by the University at the Portsmouth Guildhall on ...
  • Tactile Universe Receives Funding from the Royal Astronomical Society We are delighted to announce that the ICG Public Engagement project, The Tactile Universe has been awarded travel funding from the Royal Astronomical Society. The Tactile Universe has previously been successful in obtaining funding from the South East Physics Network, and is now halfway through this funded 6 month Portsmouth based pilot. This new RAS funding ...
  • Astronaut Tim to attend schools conference From the University of Portsmouth Press Office: Astronaut and University of Portsmouth alumnus Tim Peake has confirmed his attendance at a UK Space Agency Schools Conference to be hosted by the University on Wednesday, 2 November. Tim will attend the conference, which celebrates the work of over a million UK school students inspired by his Principia ...
  • Ogden Schools Physicist of the Year 2015/16 On Wednesday 13th July 2016, the third annual Portsmouth Ogden Schools Physicist of the Year (SPOTY) awards ceremony was held at the University of Portsmouth. The awards ceremony celebrated the achievements of the six Year 12 and 12 Year 10 pupils from local schools and colleges who were put forward for the award by their ...
  • Cosmic map will throw light on ‘dark energy’ From the University Press Office: An international team of astronomers has created the largest ever three-dimensional map of distant galaxies in a bid to help them understand one of the most mysterious forces in the universe. Scientists including a team led by Dr Florian Beutler at the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation have spent ...

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