Research News

An international team of cosmochemists and astrophysicists, which includes Jordi José, a researcher from the Physics Department of the UPC and the Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), has discovered a meteorite grain forged during the final phases of a star disappeared a long time ago. Encapsulated in a meteorite collected in Antarctica, the tiny grain - only a few microns in size - has shed new light on the terminal phases of star life and how they sow the universe with the building blocks of new stars, planets and life.

Researchers from the physics department together with the University of Cambridge and the University of Barcelona have identified a solid material, respectful with the environment, which could replace the hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFC) and hydrocarbons (HC) -highly contaminants and flammable- that are used currently in most refrigerators, air conditioners and cooling systems

A study led by UPC/IEEC has determined for the first time the mass and radius of one of the oldest stars in our Galaxy, allowing to validate the theoretical relationship between the mass and radius for this class of stars. Alberto Rebassa, a physics professor from our department in the group Astronomy and Astrophysics, has led the study.

M. Carmen Casas, Raúl Rodríguez and Alba Llabrés collaborate with the Meteorological Service of Catalonia and the UB to evaluate the quality of rainfall data since 1855, long before standardized measurements were taken at modern meteorological stations. The reliability of these data is key to understanding the effects of climate change in Catalonia.

The computational research, lead by Arnau Miró, professor in the Aerospace Engineering Division of the Physics Department and a member of the TUAREG research group, has been published in the International Journal of Thermal Sciences in collaboration with the CASE department in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. As Arnau Miró says, he is focused on understanding “how to cool future stuff using Synthetic Jets” with a special focus on synthetic jet actuators.

The work of Laureano Ramírez-Piscina in Physical Review E on the Langevin formalism of diffusion in channels last July has been selected by the editor as one of the main contributions to statistical physics in the journal.

The undergraduate project done by Martí Perpinyà in Physical Engineering, under the direction of Alberto Rebassa and Jordi José, has discovered the first system of three white dwarfs. The UPC news picks up the report hoping it will reach a general audience