Disclaimer footnote: Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US National Science Foundation. Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin is a Program Director in the National Science Foundation (NFS) Division of Physics with responsibility for the program in Plasma Physics. In his own research, he focuses on understanding “magnetic reconnection”, a compex physical phenomenon which causes the aurora borealis, solar flares, coronal mass ejections and gamma ray bursts. This is a process which

The gravitational force needed for the universe to evolve from when it was almost uniform, during the Big Bang, until galaxies, stars, and planets were formed is provided by the “dark matter”. But in spite of the essential role of this basic component, which is estimated to make up some 80% of the matter in the universe, scientists know virtually nothing about its nature, behaviour, and composition, which is one of the main challenges in current physics and cosmology. Aiming to give answers to these questions the researcher Diego Blas, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics of King’s

Professor Norbert Langer is currently head of the Stellar Physics Group at the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (Bonn, Germany). Considered one of the world’s leading experts in the field of theoretical stellar Astrophysics, for more than three decades he has been researching the evolution of high mass, from their early stages to the point when they explode as supernovae. These stars play an important role in the evolution of their host galaxies. However, their short lifetime makes them very difficult to observe, raising many questions about their nature. A correct interpretation of the