New UCLA SpinLab DIYnamics Video: “Inertial Circles: Motion in a Rotating Frame”

Have you ever wondered why circles and circular motion are so prevalent when observing geophysical dynamics? Between ocean currents, hurricanes, and even Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, circles are found everywhere within the realm of Earth and planetary phenomena.

This video dives into the world of motion in a rotating frame, with a real-world application being the rotating frame we live within — our rotating Earth! It discusses the Coriolis Force, which becomes the governing force driving a particle’s motion on an equipotential surface that is effectively flat. Normally in a rotating system, you’d also have centrifugal force and gravitational force coming into play, but on a surface where those two forces are balanced, you are able to really see the effect of Coriolis, as shown in this video.

For this experiment, all you really need is a rotating paraboloid and some free particles, such as the ball bearings used in the video. Do this experiment yourself in the lab and learn why circles keep popping up in Earth dynamics!

Part 1: Newton’s Bucket

Note: This video is Part 2 following the Newton’s Bucket video, which explains the backstory of the paraboloidal surface. The Newton’s Bucket experiment dives deeper into centrifugal force and gravity, so check that video out first and come back here after. You can also read the accompanying EPSS news post, Newton’s Bucket: Fluid in a Spinning Tank.

Prof. Amy Mainzer Receives Prestigious 2026 Robert Holland Jr. Award

The Robert Holland Jr. Award was created by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement to honor senior scientists for their exceptional contributions in research, teaching, mentorship, and impact on helping students achieve their full potential. The Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) is a private foundation created in 1912 with a mission to support basic scientific research and education. This year, the Foundation selected Prof. Amy Mainzer of UCLA’s Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences to be one of the three recipients of the 2026 Holland Award in recognition of her contributions to asteroid and comet research as well as raising public awareness and engagement with science. Prof. Mainzer was inducted to be part of the community of RSCA’s Cottrell Scholars, a cohort of researchers, scientific leaders, teachers, and mentors spanning astronomy, chemistry, and physics. Prof. Mainzer is leading NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission, a space telescope currently under construction that is aimed at finding the majority of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets capable of causing severe regional destruction. She was also the science advisor, co-executive producer, and host of the PBS Kids television show Ready Jet Go, and is the host of the new podcast Unobtanium, that explores the connection between science and storytelling.

Learn more about the award: https://rescorp.org/cottrell-scholars/robert-holland-jr-award/

Prof. Hao Cao Among Seven UCLA Keck Scholars Awarded W.M. Keck Foundation Bridge Funding

UCLA EPSS Assistant Professor Hao Cao has been named one of seven UCLA faculty members selected as a W.M. Keck Scholar through the Keck Foundation Bridge Funding program. The award supports innovative early-career research and helps advance promising projects across multiple scientific disciplines.

Prof. Hao Cao and graduate student Wenyu Zhang, the project’s named Keck Fellow, are leading the research project Unveiling Jupiter’s Dusty Ring System Through Neural Network Analysis of Juno Plasma Wave Data. Their work uses artificial intelligence to map the structure of Jupiter’s rings and better understand the dynamic processes that shape them.

The bridge funding is part of UCLA’s long-standing partnership with the W.M. Keck Foundation, supporting groundbreaking research by pairing early-career faculty with doctoral students.

Read the full UCLA Newsroom article.

New Podcast: Unobtanium

EPSS Professor Amy Mainzer is co-hosting Unobtanium, a new podcast that explores the science and technology behind science fiction movies and television.

Through conversations with scientists, researchers, and special guests, the podcast examines the real-world science that inspires some of our favorite stories on screen. The series also features interviews with several EPSS faculty members, including discussions on topics ranging from planetary science to space exploration.

Listen and learn more:

Follow @unobtainiumpod on social media for new episodes and updates.

Geochemistry (235): Peng Ni – Young age of fibrous diamonds from East Africa revealed by in situ Rb-Sr geochronology

Speaker: Peng Ni

Affiliation: UCLA, EPSS

Date: Thursday, June 4, 2026

Time: 12:00 PM

Abstract

Constraining the age of individual diamonds is challenging because diamond itself lacks radioactive parent–daughter nuclides in its lattice for direct dating. I show that recent advancements in mass spectrometry enable in situ Rb–Sr isotope analysis of diamonds containing high-density fluid micro-inclusions. Application of this technique to a suite of diamonds from Kankan, Guinea, demonstrates its high efficiency in Rb-Sr isotope analysis compared with previous bulk methods. The improved spatial resolution also enables potential isochron Rb-Sr dating of these diamonds. One zoned diamond, ON-KAN-381, is found to be 73 ± 81 Ma in age, overlapping kimberlite eruption ages in West Africa. Together, these results place a quantitative constraint on the formation of Kankan fibrous diamonds, indicating that they originated from mantle metasomatism events in the West African continental lithospheric mantle within tens of millions prior to the kimberlite eruption.

PhD Defense: David James – Solid Components in the Deep Interiors of Giant Planets and Super-Earths: A First-Principles Investigation of Magnesium Oxide

Speaker: David James

Affiliation: UCLA, EPSS

Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Time: 9:00 AM

Mentor:

Dr. Lars Stixrude

Location:

Slichter 3853

PhD Defense: Jacob Widmer – Surface Change on Modern Mars as a Record of Atmospheric Drivers

Speaker: Jacob Widmer

Affiliation: UCLA, EPSS

Date: Monday, June 1, 2026

Time: 10:30 AM

Mentor:

Dr. Mackenzie Day

Location:

Slichter 3853

Happening Today @ 4:30 EPSS Undergraduate Research Poster Session May 26

Good afternoon EPSS Community

Space Physics (293): Ben Lynch – The Coronal Magnetic Field’s Influence on the Structure of the Inner Heliosphere During Parker Solar Probe’s Encounter 24

Speaker: Ben Lynch

Affiliation: UCLA, EPSS

Date: Friday, May 29, 2026

Time: 3:30 PM

Abstract

The eleven-year solar activity cycle manifests itself in a variety of spectacular and interdependent ways. For example, the spatiotemporal distribution of the emergence of bipolar active regions (ARs) impart a spatiotemporal dependence to the response and re-configuration of overlying large-scale, closed-flux helmet streamer belt. Additionally, specific AR–background field configurations can arise that form new, intermediate-scale closed-flux systems surrounded by single polarity open fields, such as coronal pseudostreamers, which also inherit the underlying solar cycle-dependence of their photospheric flux distributions. The global magnetic structure of the solar corona, in turn, determines the entire solar wind stream and magnetic sector structure of the inner heliosphere. The cusp region of the coronal helmet streamer belt extends into a dense, slow solar wind plasma sheet that contains the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), separating the open fields of opposite polarity. The equivalent heliospheric extension of pseudostreamer outflows along the outer spine-line or spine-fan, result in slow, plasma-sheet like solar wind embedded in a single open field polarity.

In this talk , I will present an overview of the ways in which coronal magnetic field topology, open-closed flux system boundary layers, and their dynamic evolution can determine the resulting solar wind properties and structure of the inner heliosphere. As an illustrative example, I will discuss recent remote-sensing and in-situ observations made by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) in the context of the Casillas et al. [2026] magnetohydrodynamic simulation results. For example, the PSP Encounter 24 observations appear to have captured certain aspects of the Casillas et al. scenario of a global-scale pseudostreamer–to–helmet streamer transition and the generation of outflow transients associated with the opening-up (and closing-down) of a large-scale pseudostreamer flux system which creates (or destroys) the parasitic-polarity solar wind streams and their associated HCSs.

From the Clinic to the Concert Hall to the Cosmos

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/from-the-clinic-to-the-concert-hall-to-the-cosmos