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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole, has revealed today a new view of the massive object at the center of the M87 galaxy: how it looks in polarized light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarization, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole. The observations are key to explaining how the M87 galaxy, located 55 million light-years away, is able to launch energetic jets from its core.

The Rosalyn S. Yalow Professorship is the first award in the college’s history to be named in honor of a female alumna. This prestigious, inaugural appointment has been awarded to Dr. Nadya Mason, physics professor, award-winning physicist, and champion for diversity in STEM.

Now a group of physicists in the U.S., Japan, and Taiwan have shed new light on the asymmetry in the makeup of the proton sea. The scientists are members of a decade-long experiment called the SeaQuest Collaboration, conducted at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago, including University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Physics Professors Naomi Makins and Jen-Chieh Peng and their postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, who participated in all phases of the experiment since its inception.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we point out that a nearby supernova can explain the ozone loss and thus may be the trigger for one or more late Devonian biological extinctions.