In The News: Department of Physics and Astronomy

Las Vegas Sun

Polar bears are invading Russian villages because melting arctic ice pushes them toward civilization. That’s just the latest story in a string of disasters, ominous warnings and strange happenings brought on by global climate change.

CNN

You might have heard of a serpentine line, but did you know about jockeying and slips & skips? Enter the weird and wonderful world of waiting line design.

Las Vegas Sun

Thank you to Brian Greenspun for a wonderful column about UNLV (“UNLV now sits on a very short list,” Feb. 3).

KNPR News

UNLV’s College of Sciences turns 50 years old this year

The college is an umbrella over chemistry, geoscience, math, physics, water management and many more areas of high science.

KSNV-TV: News 3

It’s known as the final frontier, and there are still so many questions. UNLV researchers are hoping to unlock the answer to how planets form and are now one step closer after finding a group of young planets in distant solar systems.

Inverse

As you wait in line to ship Christmas presents to far-flung family, mulling over questions of whether the FedEx insurance is a good value, and if fake or real Christmas trees are better for the environment, you might find yourself wondering, is any of this worth it? Why am I here? What happens if I die? What is the meaning of life?

Daily Mail

Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas say the 20 nearby protoplanetary disks observed in the study suggest there may be a greater number of large, young planets in our galaxy than previously expected.

Science Daily

Astronomers used the powerful ALMA telescope to discover that in other parts of the Milky Way Galaxy there is potentially a large population of young planets -- similar in mass to Neptune or Jupiter -- at wide-orbit that are not detectable by other current planet searching techniques.

Thrillist

Considering how many people willingly wait in long lines, it’s surprising how much they hate it.

Pacific Standard

The Kepler telescope has run out of fuel and officially entered retirement. Luckily, there is a replacement on the way to continue our observation of the stars.

Inverse

Astronomers expect TESS to find thousands more planetary systems.

ABC News

Rogue planets are the drifters of the galaxy, wandering interstellar space alone. Now it turns out they could have company in the form of moons — and perhaps even sustain life that hitched a ride on them.