GSU Physics and Astronomy

08/20/2026

The next episode of Cosmic Conversations at the Fernbank Science Center will be happening on Thursday, August 27th from 7-9pm. Dr. Justin Robinson will use the 10k resolution of Fernbank's dome to showcase a smorgasbord of recent results and data releases from today's premier astronomical observatories, including JWST, Euclid, Vera Rubin & LSST, DESI, EHT, and of course CHARA!

A planetarium show will directly lead into the Conversation, and you can purchase a combo ticket for both the planetarium show and the talk, or simply just a ticket for the talk. The planetarium show will begin at 7pm, and the featured talk will begin at 8pm. Cosmic Conversations is $5 per person for students, $10 for adults, and proceeds are split between Fernbank and our Department's foundation fund. Tickets can be reserved through the series' official webpage: https://t.gsu.edu/4jZ4eWq.

08/11/2026

Last week we held our annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium. Congratulations to all of our summer research interns who presented and described to us what they did over their summer vacation! We had a full agenda covering topics from astronomy to solar physics to instrumentation to nuclear physics. Great work everyone!

08/06/2026

Join us for Astronomy on Tap Atlanta from 8:00-9:30pm next Thursday, August 13th at the Decatur location of Three Taverns Brewery featuring astro PhD candidate Madison Markham!

Madison will be discussing one of the primary tools used for extragalactic astronomy, the Cosmic Distance Ladder! As usual, star and planet-gazing to follow if the weather cooperates.

For more events like these, follow AoT Atlanta

07/16/2026

Cosmic Conversations at the Fernbank Science Center returns next Thursday, July 23rd from 7-9pm, featuring astro PhD candidate Mahir Patel! Mahir will bring us back to the Milky Way by telling us about his research measuring the ages of the nearest open star clusters!

A planetarium show will precede the Conversation, and you can purchase a combo ticket for both the planetarium show and the talk, or simply just a ticket for the talk. Cosmic Conversations is $5 per person for students, $10 for adults, and the proceeds are split between Fernbank and our Department's foundation fund. Any and all tickets can be reserved through the series' official webpage: https://t.gsu.edu/4jZ4eWq. The planetarium show will begin at 7pm, and the featured talk will begin at 8pm.

06/29/2026

"The newest of the programs is gLOWCOST (global low-cost observation of the dynamic changes in the space weather and terrestrial weather). It distributes fully assembled and calibrated tabletop muon detectors to research groups worldwide. Xiaochun He, a physics professor at Georgia State University and gLOWCOST’s founder, believes that if the project is successful, it will not only provide outreach opportunities for middle and high school students but also create a global cosmic-ray muon-flux monitoring network for space and terrestrial weather. He says his goal is to deliver detectors to researchers in more than 100 countries in the next five years."
Read more:

The specialized devices are democratizing access to cosmic-ray experiments.

06/11/2026

Join us for Astronomy on Tap Atlanta next Thursday, June 18th from 8:00-9:30pm at the Decatur location of 3 Taverns, featuring Dr. Justin Robinson!

Justin will be discussing the elusive search for dark matter, including a brief history of how we arrived at our current dark matter paradigm, and very exciting new results from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope! As usual, star and planet-gazing to follow if the weather cooperates.

For more events like these, follow AoT Atlanta

05/29/2026

Luoth Chou is an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Originally from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, she attended college at the University of Maryland after which she earned a PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "The possibility that life could exist elsewhere has always captivated my imagination, and it was this question that drove me into a life-long pursuit of studying theories of life and the methods that allow us to detect life on other planets."

Dr. Chou describes her research as "focused on 'agnostic biosignatures', a class of biosignatures that do not pre-suppose the presence of a particular life form (such as Earth-based life). I study what features of life could be common in the universe (rather than specific to Earth), and what kinds of chemical imprints unfamiliar life could leave behind. I specifically use flight-capable instruments, such as mass spectrometers, onboard various future missions like ExoMars and Dragonfly, to look for such biosignatures. Mass spectrometers are an important analytical platform used in space exploration because they allow us to study the chemical composition of a sample at very high resolution and sensitivity."

When asked if she has any early career advice to share, she replied: "I have two pieces of advice: always keep your eyes open for serendipitous opportunities, and be open-minded to failures."

Read more: https://t.gsu.edu/4d8zy2R

05/28/2026

Join us at the Fernbank Science Center next Thursday, June 4th from 7:00-9:00pm for the next Cosmic Conversations featuring Dr. Misty Bentz! Misty will be delving into her research area of world-renowned expertise: supermassive black holes!

A planetarium show will directly precede the talk. Tickets are $5 per person for students or $10 for adults and may be reserved through the series' official webpage (https://t.gsu.edu/4jZ4eWq). The planetarium show will begin at 7pm, with the featured talk beginning at 8pm. A ticket allows you to attend either or both experiences. Ticket pricing remains the same whether you attend one portion of the evening or both.

05/28/2026

"For Young-Kee Kim, physics has always transcended borders. 'Global collaboration isn’t only a necessity,' she says. 'There’s also beauty in it.'"

"Kim is the 2024 APS President and an experimental particle physicist, whose field is known for projects of grandiose scale, with thousands of scientists around the world working in tandem on decades-long projects. 'There are so many wonderful outcomes, because we have so many people from diverse backgrounds,' she says."

"Kim herself is a walking example of global science: Originally from South Korea, she has worked on experiments in Japan, Switzerland, and the U.S."

"Kim earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Korea University and her doctorate from the University of Rochester, and worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. After several years at the University of California, Berkeley, she moved to the University of Chicago in 2003, where she is the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of physics."

Read more: https://t.gsu.edu/4cCVyCU

05/27/2026

Dr. Brittany Kamai is only the second native Hawaiian to earn a PhD in astrophysics. “Growing up in urban Honolulu, Kamai never felt a strong connection to the night sky. That changed when she took an introductory astronomy course in college. What really hooked her was learning that the vast majority of the universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter, which still remain a mystery to astronomers.”

“At the end of the course, I went to my teacher and asked, ‘How do I figure out what dark energy is?’” Kamai recalls. “The teacher told me to start by majoring in physics. I went back home and told everyone I was going to major in physics, and they all thought I was in over my head — including my high school teachers.”

“Kamai proved them wrong. She earned a BS, MA, MS, and PhD in physics, and then continued to work on the Nobel-prize winning gravitational-wave project, LIGO, before stepping into a leadership role on Cosmic Explorer, an instrument being developed to deepen and clarify humanity’s gravitational-wave view of the cosmos.”

“Along the way, Kamai co-founded the Society of Indigenous Physicists (SIP), a forum to connect with other Indigenous scientists. “So many of us are the only Indigenous people in anything that we’ve done in physics,” she says. “Many of us are the first and only from our nations. This is a chance for us to be together and have high-level conversations about our respective fields but also incorporate discussions about our ancestral and spiritual knowledge that connects with our work.” Encouragement and letters of support from SIP colleagues led to Kamai's current course:” Pacific Indigenous Astrophysics, which she is teaching as a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington.

Read more: https://t.gsu.edu/3Wt49Am