gorham

Peter W. Gorham

Professor of Physics
Department of Physics & Astronomy,
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Watanabe Hall 324
808-956-9157 office
808-956-7391 (group secretary)
808-956-2930 fax

Recent news:

2022: The Comic Ray Lunar Sounder (CoRaLS), led by UHM Physics selected for a DALI award (Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation). The project has been awarded about $3M of funding to increase the technology readiness level of space flight hardware for a payload with unique capabilities to detect subsurface ice in the lunar polar regions.

Lunar exploration analysis group (LEAG 2021) presentation

The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna's (ANITA) successor long duration balloon mission to detect the highest energy cosmic neutrinos, the Payload for Ultra-high Energy Observations (PUEO) has been selected in early 2021 for the NASA Astrophysics Pioneers program

The first balloon mission ever selected to this new NASA program, which is designed for pathfinder missions with a rapid development cycle.

PUEO's first flight will be in December 2024.

New results from ANITA in 2021: hints of possible cosmic tau neutrino signals: "Unusual Near-Horizon Cosmic-Ray-like Events Observed by ANITA-IV," published in Physical Review Letters

2020: Peter Gorham appears in John Michael Godier's Event Horizon YouTube series, for an extended discussion of high energy cosmic neutrinos and ANITA results.

2020: Erica Morley and Peter Gorham, "Evidence for Nanocoulomb Charges on Spider Ballooning Silk," published in Physical Review E, July issue.

First measurement of ballooning silk charge, confirms that ballooning spiders can use Earth's electrostatic field to initiate flight, following up earlier work by E. Morley & D. Robert

2018 ANITA results on Antarctic measurements of cosmic-ray-like particles garner significant press coverage, highlighted by Physical Review Letters, and covered extensively elsewhere
UH News article here

The 2016 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics awarded to Atsuto Suzuki and the KamLAND collaboration, including UH Physicists

For the fundamental discovery and exploration of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the Standard Model of particle physics.

Encounters at the End of The World, directed by Werner Herzog, nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary at the 2009 Oscars. Features the ANITA project & Gorham's research in its final segment.

Education:

B.A, English Literature, University of California at Irvine, 1980

B.S., Physics, UC Irvine, 1980

M.S. Physics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1983

Ph.D., Physics, UH Manoa, 1986

Positions:

Research Fellow in Physics, California Institute of Technology, 1987-1989

Senior Research Fellow in Physics, Caltech, 1989-1991

Research Professor, UH Manoa 1991-1996

Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, 1996-2001

Publications:

Google scholar

Teaching (needs an update!):

Physics 170, Spring 2002

Physics 305, Computational Physics, Spring 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

Physics 475 Electronics for Physicists, Fall 2002, 2003, 2004

Physics 272, spring 2007

Physics 485, spring 2007

Research (my very old list):

Radio Detection of High Energy Particles

RADHEP 2000 (UCLA)

Goldstone Lunar Ultra-high energy neutrino Experiment (GLUE)

ongoing experiment w/ JPL & UCLA

Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)

NASA Particle Astrophysics Research & Technology program (2002)

New Scientist news note (Nov. 2001)

Under study as a NASA Small Explorer Program (SMEX) Mission 2004

Results (PRL, 2006) of ANITA-lite prototype flight in Antarctica, 2004

First flight of ANITA, 2007

Measurements of the Askaryan effect

at Argonne & SLAC (1999-2000)

SLAC 2002 (results in PRD 2005, 2006)

Observations of the Askaryan Effect in Ice 2007

Measurements of salt formation radio transparency

Selected Publications (also needs an update):

last updated 5.9.2021


2022: The Comic Ray Lunar Sounder (CoRaLS), led by UHM Physics selected for a DALI award (Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation). The project has been awarded about $3M of funding to increase the technology readiness level of space flight hardware for a payload with unique capabilities to detect subsurface ice in the lunar polar regions. Lunar exploration analysis group (LEAG 2021) presentation
The Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna's (ANITA) successor long duration balloon mission to detect the highest energy cosmic neutrinos, the Payload for Ultra-high Energy Observations (PUEO) has been selected in early 2021 for the NASA Astrophysics Pioneers program The first balloon mission ever selected to this new NASA program, which is designed for pathfinder missions with a rapid development cycle. PUEO's first flight will be in December 2024.
New results from ANITA in 2021: hints of possible cosmic tau neutrino signals: "Unusual Near-Horizon Cosmic-Ray-like Events Observed by ANITA-IV," published in Physical Review Letters
2020: Peter Gorham appears in John Michael Godier's Event Horizon YouTube series, for an extended discussion of high energy cosmic neutrinos and ANITA results.
2020: Erica Morley and Peter Gorham, "Evidence for Nanocoulomb Charges on Spider Ballooning Silk," published in Physical Review E, July issue. First measurement of ballooning silk charge, confirms that ballooning spiders can use Earth's electrostatic field to initiate flight, following up earlier work by E. Morley & D. Robert
2018 ANITA results on Antarctic measurements of cosmic-ray-like particles garner significant press coverage, highlighted by Physical Review Letters, and covered extensively elsewhere UH News article here
The 2016 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics awarded to Atsuto Suzuki and the KamLAND collaboration, including UH Physicists For the fundamental discovery and exploration of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the Standard Model of particle physics.
Encounters at the End of The World, directed by Werner Herzog, nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary at the 2009 Oscars. Features the ANITA project & Gorham's research in its final segment.