international - Bergische Universität Wuppertal

64
At_A_GLANCE
‘reACtinG AtMos-
PHere’ reseArCH
netWorK
Against a background of
global climate and weather
change that increasingly
threatens the basis
of human life, in particular
of future generations, and
whose main cause is seen
to be anthropogenic greenhouse
gases, the network
aims to achieve a better
understanding of the highly
complex processes in the
atmosphere and their many
determining factors. Key
atmospheric processes will
be identified, interactions
between existing political
measures examined, and
suggestions for improvements
in a changing world
developed.
kwww.atmos.physik.uniwuppertal.de/reacting/reacting.html
WorLd’s biGGest
neutrino teLesCoPe
After almost 6 years’ con-
struction and a decade of
preparation, the IceCube
neutrino telescope at the
South Pole is now ready for
work. The world’s biggest
particle detector consists
of a cubic kilometer of ice
within which an array of extremely
sensitive light detectors
is buried. Weighing
many gigatons, the instrument
captures the traces
of neutrinos from outer
space that can provide information
about far distant
galaxies.
khttp://astro.uni-wuppertal.de
reCord dAtA VoLuMe
FroM LHC
April 2011: after five
months the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) at CERN,
the European organization
for Nuclear Research, near
Geneva, has started work
again, and the first weekend
of the restart provided
as much data as the entire
previous year. on the night
of April 21 a new world
record for data volumes
was established, beating
the previous record, held
by the Tevatron Collider at
Fermilab, near Chicago, by
some 20%. The figures refer
to the number of proton
collisions: the more collisions,
the greater the volume
of data produced.
kwww.physik.uni-wuppertal.dekPhysics
Research
kParticle Physics
kExperimental elementary/
Particle Physics
neW HiGH
FreQuenCy reCord
A UW research group led
by Prof. Dr. Ullrich Pfeiffer
(High Frequency Systems
in Communications Engineering)
has set a new high
frequency record. At the
International Solid-State
Circuits Conference in San
Francisco the group presented
a system using silicon
germanium technology
whose transmitters and receivers
operate at 820 gigahertz.
Previously only 160
gigahertz was possible.
The advantage of terahertz
waves over conventional
high energy radiation (e.g.
X-rays) is that they do not
attack biological tissue.
kwww.ihct.uniwuppertal.de
k www.dotfive.eu
k www.ihp-microelectronics.com
suCCessFuL
MAiden FLiGHt
Led by Prof. Dr. Ralf Koppmann,
UW’s atmospheric
physicists have developed
the air sampler MIRAH
(Measurement of Stable
Isotope Ratios on HALo),
which allows high volume
air samples to be taken
in the atmosphere. After
stringent laboratory tests
MIRAH has now successfully
completed its first
airborne mission on board
the new German research
aircraft HALo.
kwww.atmos.physik.uniwuppertal.de
x-rAys used to inVestiGAte
tHe ProPerties
oF MAteriALs
The atomic structure of materials
is of great interest to
physics, chemistry, biology
and nanotechnology, as
well as to industry. High intensity
X-rays filtered from
synchrotron radiation can
be used to shed light on the
precise ordering of atoms
in various materials. From
this depends, for example,
whether steel is hard or
brittle, whether a surface
corrodes, or whether a
particular medicine works.
Led by physicist Prof. Dr.
Ronald Frahm, a UW research
group is working
jointly with the universities
of Dortmund and Siegen
to investigate the atomic
structure of materials.
the University of WUppertal
researCh bUlletin
… Presented in tHe Current issue: euroPeAn studies
And reseArCH At uW. HistoriAns, PoLitiCAL sCientists
And eConoMists CAst CritiCAL LiGHt on euroPe.
research
continues
outPut
no. 5 now
available.
03_UW_RESEARCH
65