Open house with the mouse
On 3th October, the Faculty of Physics at the Ruhr University Bochum invited children to the Mouse Day. After the physics show, the children experimented in numerous workshops and explored the world of physics. Participants learned about plasmas and their important applications in the plasma workshop, such as coating surfaces. They were able to ignite plasmas, experiment and coat samples using the sputter coater.
Physical Review Letter on turbulence
Our scientist Rainer Grauer was involved in the development of a new approach to describe turbulence mathematically, together with his student Sumeja Bureković and long-term collaborator Tobias Schäfer (City University of New York).
In particular, irregular fluctuations, so-called intermittency, which cannot be described with a normal Gaussian distribution, are addressed.
They developed an approach using instantons - represent the probabilities of turbulence as a spatio-temporal path integral. This method allows for the first time to describe and calculate isolated and localized fluctuations, which is a major step in solving one of the big open questions in classical physics.
The full publication can be found here:
S. Bureković, T. Schäfer, R. Grauer „Instantons, Fluctuations, and Singularities in the Supercritical Stochastic Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation“
See also the news article on our faculty’s webpage here

Image: Instantones with smaller and larger localized fluctuation.
Long Night of Astronomy 2024
On Saturday 19.10.2024 the “Long Night of Astronomy” will take place all over Germany.
There will be lots of fun with comets, planets and solar observations at our Campus Observatory!
We will meet at the Audimax of the RUB at 5 pm. The event will last until 10 pm.
Please check this webpage for more information!
We are looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!
Important: The observations only take place in good weather.
You can find further activities during the long night of astronomy here.

Public lecture „Zwerggalaxien: Zeugen und Treiber der kosmischen Evolution“
We are pleased to invite you to the public lecture “Zwerggalaxien: Zeugen und Treiber der kosmischen Evolution" (in German).
In his talk, Adam Enders will focus on dwarf galaxies and their unique properties, highlighting their crucial role in the evolution of our cosmos. You will discover how these small galaxies play a decisive part in shaping the universe.
When 23.10.24 at 20:00
Where Planetarium Bochum
For registration and further information, please have a look at the Planetarium’s homepage.

Picture:
A small dwarf galaxy about 60 million light-years away.
Investigating the neighbourhood of galaxies
Our Universe is expanding, and this goes even faster with time. But the cause of that - the mysterious Dark Energy - is still unknown.
To understand these fundamental processes better, is it important to know the distribution of matter in the universe.
An international team, including CRC members Hendrik Hildebrandt and Anna Wittje is carrying out the „Physics of the Accelerating Universe“ Survey (PAU Survey). This survey aims to map the distance and surrounding of 1.8 million galaxies.
The picture shows roughly half of the sample, with the distance colour-coded - revealing nicely the large-scale structures of the Universe.
These data will help to constrain galaxy parameters which are essential for solving the Dark Energy puzzle.
The full RUB press release can be found here (in German).
