1400 Degrees

Explore all interviews.

Explore all interviews.

Federica Bianco’s Research Ranges From Outer Space To Human Cities

It’s hard to pin Federica Bianco down. Literally, because the University of Delaware researcher moonlights as a professional boxer named “The Mad Scientist”—but also figuratively, because she studies so many seemingly unrelated topics, from astrophysics to urban planning. She’s even dabbled in public health: During the pandemic, she led a team to develop and run […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Tien-Tien Yu Repurposes Old Data For New Science

Tien-Tien Yu applies a thrift store-like strategy to physics research. The University of Oregon professor works to repurpose existing datasets to ask new scientific questions. For example, in 2022, she and two colleagues proposed a way to take data collected in CERN’s NA62 — an experiment designed to look for rare decay products of an […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Emily Rauscher Talks Exoplanet Weather

Growing up in Berkeley, California, Emily Rauscher delved into different worlds through books, movies, and games. “I was a gamer kid,” she says. Her favorite was a role-playing game called Call of Cthulhu, set in a fantasy world with powerful supernatural beings. “You stumble upon an object; you read a book you shouldn’t have; you […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

At 30, Laura Kreidberg Started A New Research Department

In 2020—four years after finishing her PhD—astronomer Laura Kreidberg founded a new department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. In addition to her research, she would hire and direct a cohort of scientists to study the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system. She was 30 years old.  Over three years, […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Cindy Regal Devises New Tricks To Measure The Quantum World

Cindy Regal builds stuff. She designs it, constructs it, troubleshoots it. It’s a practice she’s known and loved as early as her middle school years in Duluth, Minnesota, where she crafted a clock in woodshop class. In college, she was taking part in research to build lasers. These days, she develops and studies tiny devices […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Smadar Naoz Doesn’t Care For Aptitude Tests

Working as a postdoc at Harvard in 2014, Smadar Naoz organized a group of local children to learn about astronomy on campus. The group toured a solar observatory and listened to Harvard astrophysicists talk about the prospects of studying the cosmos for a career.  The organizers had tailored the workshop, titled “Astronomy for Everyone,” to […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Exploring the Universe of Materials with Nadya Mason

In her 2019 TED talk, Nadya Mason cuts open a Etch-A-Sketch on stage. As the crowd watches, she plays with the magnetic filings and observes the sticky goo oozing out of the toy. Leading by example, she wants the audience to get personal with their technology: to dismantle, test, and question their everyday objects in […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

How Authenticity Shapes Jessica Esquivel’s Science

The physics community is on the brink of change, Jessica Esquivel hopes. First, in terms of the science: The Fermilab physicist is a member of the Muon g-2 experiment, which recently announced a potentially groundbreaking new measurement of the muon’s magnetic moment, a property that dictates how much the fundamental particle wobbles in a magnetic […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Young-Kee Kim And The Future Of Particle Physics

Young-Kee Kim has made a bet, over and over again, for the last 25 years. She thinks that the answers to some of physics’ biggest questions lie inside a particle collider—within the shrapnel of elementary particles as they smash into each other near the speed of light. She’s been right many times. The University of […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Debra Fischer On Scientific Culture and Life On Other Planets

When Debra Fischer joined the field of astronomy in the 1990’s, most experts doubted whether planets existed outside of our solar system. Today, researchers have confirmed the detection of more than 4,500 exoplanets—thanks, in part, to her work. “We now know that most stars have planetary systems,” says Fischer, an astronomer at Yale University. “I’ve […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Looking for Dark Matter, Reina Maruyama Found Herself

Reina Maruyama has had her doubts. Like the rest of us, the Yale University physicist doesn’t know what dark matter is. Maruyama is involved in experiments that search for both axion and WIMP particles, two hypothesized contenders for the invisible substance. She also doesn’t know why matter dominates over antimatter in our universe. She studies […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Kerstin Perez, a Dark Matter Hunter from West Philly

Don’t be fooled by her title; astrophysicist Kerstin Perez doesn’t get too excited about the night sky. “If I ever write a memoir, I want the first line to be, ‘I never once looked up at the sky as a child and wondered where we all come from,” she says.  Instead, Perez’s passion is building […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

How to Attend a Cosmic Fireworks Show with Mansi Kasliwal

A phone alert will often jolt Mansi Kasliwal awake in the middle of the night. Its message? Forget sleeping. Telescopes have detected an unusual burst of light in the night sky, and she’d better record it. If she’s lucky, these fireworks—known as “transients”—may be a sign of a rare cosmic event: the explosion of a […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Andrea Ghez on Discovering the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

All of us are all orbiting a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We know this because of Andrea Ghez. The University of California, Los Angeles astronomer pioneered telescope techniques to peer into our galaxy’s center, which she has now studied for over 25 years. Her team’s analysis of […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

Serena Eley is Swept up in a Vortex of Superconductivity

A newspaper article may have sealed Serena Eley’s professional fate. “When I was in second or third grade, my sisters and I would read the children’s pages in the Washington Post on Sundays,” says Eley, an assistant professor of physics at the Colorado School of Mines. “In one edition, they had an article on Maglev […]

Sophia Chen for 1400 Degrees

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