University of Arizona in the News

The Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona is finishing the sixth of seven mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. Each mirror takes four years to produce. When completed around the start of the next decade, the GMT will be the world's most powerful land-based telescope.

Satellites have long been used to enhance weather forecasts, TV and radio signals, military surveillance and, more recently, cell phone and internet coverage and GPS navigation. And while low-earth orbit satellites such as the Starlink system deployed by SpaceX aren't the brightest man-made objects in the sky, the sheer number of them causes concerns for the future of terrestrial astronomy.

University of Arizona professor emeritus of American Indian Studies Tom Holm discusses his new book "Ira Hayes and the Price of Heroism," which recounts the life of one of the six U.S. marines seen in Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of the raising of an American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II.

There are early, concerning signs that the Sonoran Desert's iconic saguaro cacti have begun to die in some locations as a persistent heat wave punctuates a decades-long megadrought. "They're only adapted to a point," said Frank Reichenbacher, an associate researcher at the University of Arizona Tumamoc Desert Laboraty on Tucson's Tumamoc Hill. "And then after that, you start getting mortality and you start getting dieback."

Extreme heat is far deadlier than other natural disasters, killing on average more than twice as many people each year as hurricanes and tornadoes combined, according to data tracked by the National Weather Service. Despite this, heat doesn't appear on the list of disasters eligible for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency because the Stafford Act – the federal law that gives FEMA the power to respond to emergencies and determines what qualifies as one – doesn't cover it.

The University of Arizona Campus-Community Relations Committee gives residents of 10 neighborhoods adjacent to the main campus a chance to meet monthly with university and city representatives. "It's been a really valuable opportunity for the neighbors to let us know what they're experiencing with university students living in the neighborhoods," said Julie Katsel, the university's assistant vice president of community relations.

Astronomers led by Brenda Frye with the University of Arizona Steward Observatory used the James Webb Space Telescope to get a new view of the enormous galaxy cluster, "El Gordo," which previously had been imaged by Hubble. Sitting about 9.7 billion light-years from Earth, Frye said El Gordo serves as "a natural, cosmic magnifying glass" that allows astronomers to view background galaxies with greater clarity.

New research led by University of Arizona professor of economics Derek Lemoine and associate professor of government and public policy Laura Bakkensen shows that even small errors in temperature predictions – as little as one degree Celsius – lead to more deaths, and that improving forecasts would save thousands of lives and billions of dollars annually. "We find that surprising extreme heat is deadly but forecasted extreme heat is not as deadly," they and a colleague write in the paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Tucson Convention Center Music Hall Friday as students in the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine celebrated their white coat ceremony, marking the start of their clinical year. "They're ready. They learned what they need to know, so now, (they will) open up their minds and their hearts, and work with the veterinarians and their practices to really do their best for animals and their clients," said the dean of college, Julie Funk.

University of Arizona entomology researcher Andrew Legan amassed millions of views on TikTok recently with a video showcasing the effects of a tarantula hawk's sting on its namesake prey. Legan came across one of the wasps while walking his dog, interrupting it just after it had immobilized a spider but before it had deposited eggs in the arachnid. He subsequently documented the spider's slow recovery, which required more than five weeks.