College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences

SCIENCEALERT - Giant worlds beyond the Solar System could be the probe we need to figure out how dark matter manifests in the Universe. According to a new study, one particular dark matter model could see the mysterious mass accumulating in the cores of giant planets, collapsing into tiny black holes destined to consume the...

UNILAD - A worrying new study has found that some planets might develop black holes from within that go on to destroy them. The research, which was published on August 20, found that dark matter may gather over time in the center of some planets which creates a black hole that ultimately goes on to...

EARTHSKY - The mysterious substance known as dark matter makes up most of the mass in the universe. But there is a lot we don’t know about it. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have suggested using exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars – to study and better understand dark matter. They said on...

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - For years, the biggest hurdle in quantum computing has been scale. While quantum processors can already tackle complex simulations in chemistry, material science, and data security, most remain too small and fragile to be practical for large-scale applications. A new study led by the University of California, Riverside, suggests that may be...

EARTH.COM - Exoplanets used to be fringe objects in astronomy. Now, they are popular subjects for testing ideas about the composition of the universe. A new study proposes that some gas giants might steadily collect dark matter in their cores until the buildup tips into a collapse that forms a tiny black hole. Mehrdad Phoroutan-Mehr...

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - A study suggests that exoplanets could be used to search for dark matter — the elusive substance that makes up 85% of the universe’s matter. Dark matter’s gravitational pull proves it exists, but we’ve never been able to directly find it. Now, the University of California, Riverside study proposes that exoplanets, especially...

INTERESTING ENGINEERING - Quantum computing’s ability to solve problems that would take classical computers millennia has captured global interest. But the path to functional, scalable quantum machines has been riddled with fundamental challenges. At the heart of the problem lies the qubit, the quantum version of a digital bit. Qubits can exist in multiple states...

GIZMODO - After relying on an educated guess for decades, scientists have finally confirmed the dipole moment of aluminum monochloride (AlCl), an elusive but important molecule known to sneak around the interiors of ancient galaxies. An electric dipole moment is a measure of polarity—a crucial determinant for many physical properties of any system, such as...

WEBSEDGE SCIENCE - Our ability to observe the universe has gone hand in hand with the advances in technology we’ve made to do so. To understand the mysteries of the universe, we’ve gone from visible light, to ultraviolet and infrared, x-ray and gamma-ray. Today, as cosmologists begin to detect even more opaque phenomena like gravitational...

BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY - Pixels and particles collide, thanks to a pioneering student’s idea to mesh the world of video game technology with real-world physics. Sean Preins, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), has developed a customizable virtual reality program called VIRTUE, or...