UW News

Matthew McQuinn


May 27, 2020

Cosmic bursts unveil universe’s missing matter

A picture of a radio telescope in Australia pointing up to the Milky Way

An international team of astronomers has used mysterious fast radio bursts to solve a decades-old mystery of “missing matter,” material long predicted to exist in the universe but never detected — until now. The researchers have now found all of the missing “normal” matter in the vast space between stars and galaxies. The team, which includes scientists based in Australia, the United States and Chile, announced its findings in a paper published May 27 in the journal Nature.


September 26, 2019

Galaxy found to float in a tranquil sea of halo gas

A graphic showing a fast radio burst leaving its host galaxy and arriving at Earth.

An international team of astronomers has analyzed the signal from a fast radio burst — an enigmatic blast of cosmic radio waves lasting less than a millisecond — to characterize the diffuse gas in the halo of a massive galaxy.


February 23, 2016

Four UW scientists awarded Sloan Fellowships for early-career research

Four faculty members at the University of Washington have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 23, include Bingni Brunton, assistant professor of biology; Christopher Laumann, assistant professor of physics; Matthew McQuinn, assistant professor of astronomy; and Emina Torlak, assistant professor of computer science and engineering….