Physics Spring 19 Newsletter

Spring 2019 │ 2 OSU Physics Newsletter FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS Eighteen years ago, a physicist and a materials scientist from different parts of the country were paired on a project for NASA involving the study of ra- diation. Their paths crossed again in 2008 as colleagues at Oklahoma State University. Nearly two decades after their first NASA project, physicist Dr. Eric Benton, materials scientist Dr. Ranji Vaidyanathan and their graduate students are making the dream of reaching Mars safely a greater possibility for NASA. Benton studies radiation itself, designing efficient, economical ways to accurately measure cosmic rays while Vaidyanathan creates new composite materi- als in hopes of protecting astro- nauts from them. “Now, the new administration is talking about a ‘hop, skip and jump,’” Vaidyanathan said. “They are talking about hopping to the moon and jumping to Mars. Not a direct jump. The moon would come first, and creating a colony there. On the moon, they need to create what is called an igloo for protecting astronauts from space radiation and then jumping from there to Mars and back.” Getting to Mars would take a year at today’s space travel speeds, Vaidyanathan said, not- ing the voyage isn’t even possi- ble with current spacecraft ma- terials. There’s no clear picture of exactly how much radiation astronauts are exposed to, nor is there a materi- al for the space craft that would fully protect them. That’s changing. In partnership with NASA, Ben- ton recently put an inexpensive radiation detector on the Inter- national Space Station to find out just how much radiation astronauts in space receive. Next spring, Vaidyanathan will have a composite material with a greater radiation shielding capability on the ISS as well. Read the complete article from STATE, the official magazine of Oklahoma State University Dr. Kaladi Babu, Regents Profes- sor of Physics, has been ap- pointed by the American Physi- cal Society to lead the selection committee for the J.J. Sakurai Prize in Theoretical Particle Physics. He will serve as the Vice Chair of the Committee this year, which will consist of promi- nent physicists Zoltan Ligeti (Chair, Berkeley), Lisa Randall (Harvard), Nima Arkani-Hamed (Princeton IAS) and Carlos Wag- ner (Chicago). After serving a year as the Vice Chair, Babu will become the Chair of the Com- mittee next year. The J.J. Sa- kurai Prize is the highest recog- nition awarded by the American Physical Society in the field of theoretical particle physics. Eight previous recipients of this award have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in physics. CAS faculty to lead Physics Prize Committee Scientists find themselves reunited at OSU as they work on projects to help NASA get to Mars By Shannon Rigsby, STATE Magazine, 1-Nov-2018 Faculty Spotlight —The Lan- guage Of The Universe Kevin Sharp, College of Arts & Sciences, 17-Apr-2019 During his freshman year of high school in the state of Washing- ton, Joseph Haley took a class in physics. Despite many warn- ings from friends and mentors about its difficulty, he took the challenge. "You have to have a really solid math background to get into physics, but that was a moment in my life when it just clicked," Haley explained. "I took that physics class and just took to it like a duck to water. I'm ex- tremely lucky in the sense that I knew that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my life." After completing his undergrad- uate studies at the University of Washington, Haley expanded his horizons with a Princeton gradu- ate program and a post-doctoral study at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Haley said, "It's incredibly em- powering to look at something and think, 'How does that work?' and then be able to break it down to its most basic compo- nents and glean knowledge from the journey." During his post-doctoral studies, Haley worked at both the fa- mous Fermilab near Chicago and later the distinguished CERN la- boratory near Geneva, Switzer- land. Cont. on page 4 Haley in his lab