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An artist's concept of a distant galaxy with an active quasar at its center shooting out bright jets of radiation above and below the galactic disc.
Photo Credit
NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
A quasar emits exceptional amounts of energy generated by matter falling into a supermassive black hole.

The earliest quasars yet observed are shedding light on the infancy of our cosmos

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Geometric image of multicolored lines extending from a gray, rectangular structure
Photo Credit
Brian Long
Co-PI Andrew Jayich will use the new technology to create ion traps like the one shown here, in which colors indicate independent electrodes to control trapped ions.

Galan Moody leads successful effort to secure $1.3 million for advanced 3D printing
photo of a brightly colored optical experiment
Photo Credit
Courtesy Image

Atomic physicist David Weld selected for 2026 National Brown Investigator Award
concept illustration of the energy landscape of 2D materials

The first-time direct observation of exotic charge-neutral quasiparticles in twisted tungsten diselenide
man in wild sea grass
Photo Credit
Courtesy
UC Santa Barbara physics researcher Skyler Palatnik

Designing lightweight optics to detect signs of life beyond our solar system
A man in a lab coat and mask works in a laboratory lit by blue light
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
A researcher works in the lab of Ania Bleszynski Jayich

Using mechanical inputs to enhance quantum states in sensors
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Nobel winner named to national science council
Shelly Gable, David Morrison, Javier Read de Alaniz, Kelly Caylor
Photo Credit
Matt Perko and Jeff Liang
Shelly Gable, David Morrison, Javier Read de Alaniz, and Kelly Caylor

UCSB professors honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science
close up of photonics chip
Photo Credit
Jeff Liang

California prepares to accelerate quantum research and industry
A visualization of a magnetar with tilted accretion disk and energetic polar jets.
Photo Credit
Joseph Farah and Curtis McCully of LCO
A spinning magnetar twists space-time itself, causing the disk of material around it to wobble and produce the ultra-bright flashes of this peculiar kind of supernova.

UCSB researcher bridges the worlds of general relativity and supernova astrophysics
researchers at an optical table
Photo Credit
Matt Perko

UCSB’s Eddleman Quantum Institute announces new round of funding to accelerate quantum research
A pair of comets partially melt as they collide in an inset image, lower right, with the system’s young star and accretion disk in the background.
Photo Credit
Thomas Müller (MPIA/HdA)
Scientist imagine the scene when two comets collided in the Fomalhaut system, only 25 light years from Earth.

Astronomers discover huge dust clouds from violent collisions around nearby star
composite image of pictures of Nobel prize-winning physicists
Photo Credit
Matt Perko, with material from © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

UCSB physicists accept Nobel Prizes in Sweden
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