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News Archive

  • June 26, 2008
    There is now a hyperlinked glossary that comes with my introduction to The Cosmic Microwave Background. A big thanks to Karen Y. Ng, who volunteered her work. I hope this helps those people who wrote to me complaining about my excessive use of jargon...
  • June 9, 2008
    New Scientist is featuring our research as their cover story. I haven't actually seen the article yet, so more details will have to wait...
  • May 6, 2008
    My student Chad Fendt just received word that he won a second fellowship year from the program in computational science and engineering!
  • February 7, 2008
    Rishi and I released our work on Cosmic (Super-)Strings on the arxiv last week and it's creating quite a stir in the media and in several blogs. Check out the links below. There's a rumor that Science will run a news brief on our paper in the upcoming issue.
  • December 25, 2007
    A lovely present from the Chicago Tribune: they ran a very nice article on disctributed computing featuring Cosmology@Home on Christmas day!
  • December 22, 2007
    ScienceNOW is running a news story about our recent evidence for primordial non-Gaussianity in the WMAP 3-year data (see link below). The article describes the buzz around our paper at a conference in Cambridge (England) that I just got back from. The conference was called "The Very Early Universe 25 years on." The "25 years on" part of the title refers to the 25 year anniversary of a conference on the very early Universe also held in Cambridge, where the (then) new theory of inflation was discussed.
  • December 3, 2007
    Check out the new Pico web page! Pico is "speed in a bottle" a way to use massively parallel precomputation to speed up slow and sequential calculations. We used Cosmology@Home to run the training sets.
  • October 31, 2007
    Congratulations to everyone on the occasion of the Beta Release of Cosmology@Home! We made it onto the Illinois home page and there has been significant media attention. I'll keep you updated as things unfold...
  • August 29, 2007
    The members of the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration have invited me to their next collaboration meeting at University College in London.
  • August 21, 2007
    As you can see, my new website is now online. Laura has done a fantastic job designing the look and Scott has been instrumental in getting the technical implementation to work smoothly. There are two sides to the site: the "research" side and the "explore" side. The site will continue to grow. Please let me know which features and content you would like to see!
  • August 9, 2007
    I made Planck Scientist! This means full data rights and the right to be an author on all Planck Science publications. Planck is the next-generation space mission to measure the cosmic microwave background, set to launch in 2008.
  • July 25, 2007
    2physics.com (see links below) have just published an article they invited me to write: "Changing Constants, Dark Energy and the Absorption of 21 cm Radiation." This is my first online article and one of the first pieces I have written for a broader audience, so let me know what you think!
  • July 10, 2007
    New postdoctoral positions are now available in Ben's group. For information on joining the group, click on the link below.
  • May 21, 2007
    An overview of Ben's Academic Lineage is now available. View it by clicking the link below!
  • May 7, 2007
    Chad (William) Fendt has been selected for a Computational Science and Engineering Fellowship for the 2007-2008 academic year! He is only the third physics graduate student in the 13 year history of the CSE program to be so honored. Congratulations Chad!
  • April 2, 2007
    Ben's and Rishi's paper is the subject of the featured news story for Astronomy and Physics.
  • March 24, 2007
    Physicsweb.org has written an article about Rishi's and Ben's paper. Click the link below to read the story.
  • March 14, 2007
    Rishi's and Ben's paper about the fine-structure constant has been published in the 16 March 2007 issue of Physical Review Letters (Vol.98, No.11)!
  • Febrary 2, 2007
    In a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, Amit and Ben describe an optimal way to detect primordial non-Gaussian fluctuations by combining temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB. This was research done in collaboration with Eiichiro Komatsu at the University of Texas at Austin.
  • January 28, 2007
    In a forthcoming Physical Review Letter, Rishi and Ben describe the use of cosmos 21 cm radiation as a new probe of variation in a fundamental constant. Click the links below for a summary of the results or a more accessible introduction to the paper.

    Update on March 8, 2007 - Our Letter will be the subject of a news story in next week's New Scientist!
  • January 28, 2007
    WMAP Three-Year papers to be published in Astrophysics Journal now agree with our results. View the links below to view the WMAP papers, as well as ours.
  • January 26, 2007
    Funding Opportunity: German post-doctorate candidates who would like to work with Ben upon his return to the United States should visit the Join the Group page to learn more.
  • January 24, 2007
    Ben has been invited to the Humboldt Foundation Award Ceremony in Bamberg, Germany!
  • January 17, 2007
    New entries added to the FAQ section.
  • January 12, 2007
    The new website has gone live!
  • January 12, 2007
    Look at the "Join the Group" page to view the positions that Ben has available in his research group. Currently, he is looking for postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate students to perform research and a dedicated graphics/web designer.
  • January 11, 2007
    Graduate students who are interested in the University's Computational Science and Engineering program should speak with Ben, who is a faculty affiliate in the program. Students who join the program have access to additional supercomputing facilities and additional sources for fellowship funding.
  • January 6, 2007
    Construction started on the new website.
  • December 27, 2006
    The Planck Satellite model has left Urbana after nearly 7 months of being displayed at Loomis Laboratory. The model, commmisioned by the US team which worked on the actual Planck satellite, is displayed at institutions where members of the US Planck team work, such as NASA's JPL, Haverford, and the annual meeting of AAS (American Astronomical Society).

NEWLY ADDED

Glossary added to my Introduction to the Cosmic Microwave Background
Pico: Parameters for the Impatient Cosmologist
Cosmic Parameters
New Postdoctoral Positions
Ben's Lineage

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