Contributors

Black and white photo of astronomers Clarence Chant and Reynold Young kneeling and sitting, respectively, on the ground. Young is looking through the eyepiece of a long cylindrical-shaped camera positioned perpendicular to the ground and attached to a square tube covered with a cloth-like material. Chant is holding a black rectangular board underneath the tube.

The Einstein Camera

A century ago, a U of T astronomer led a small group of Canadians on a daring expedition to remote Australia. Their mission? To prove the Theory of General Relativity

Sara Seager, who has dark hair and is wearing a red coat, is in profile, peering through the eyepiece of a telescope

The Search for Another Earth

Astronomer Sara Seager believes there are other planets that support life. She’s dedicated much of her career to finding them

Prof. J.B. Caron of ecology and evolutionary biology in his lab at the Royal Ontario Museum

The Big Bang

Life on Earth exploded about 540 million years ago. Scientists are now beginning to understand why

The Day the Stars Collided

It was all hands on deck for U of T astronomers during a rare cosmic event that led to the first sighting of a new object

Illustration of a man who's head dissolved into geometric shapes. Computer science professor Geoffrey Hinton believes artificial intelligence will soon transform almost everything we do.

Getting Smarter

A U of T computer scientist is helping to build a new generation of intelligent machines

Image from Grey Matter film poster, depicting the back profile of the director looking at a flag with red, yellow and green colours running vertically

U of T’s World Wide Web

The university’s scholars are collaborating with partners in every region of the globe to answer questions that challenge us all

Photo of Ian Hacking.

What is Real?

Philosophy prof Ian Hacking’s ideas about science earn him $800,000 prize

Photo of a nurse with a child in a dental practice

Fighting Tooth Decay

A new way of peering inside teeth could find lesions before they become cavities and eliminate the need for “drilling and filling”

What Is Sacred?

Two U of T thinkers debate whether we can ever know what is truly "right" or "wrong"

Photo of Mars

Life on Mars?

Scientists are trying to determine if methane in the Martian atmosphere came from living organisms

Planetary Mysteries

Discoveries of new planets outside our solar system are forcing astronomers to rethink theories of how planets form

Illustration of a piggy bank through an x-ray

Cheaper Digital X-Rays

Physicist John Rowlands has invented a way to deliver high-quality X-rays at a fraction of the regular cost

Smashing!

Now that the Large Hadron Collider is working, U of T physicists are preparing to sift through mountains of data in search of the elusive Higgs boson

Image of a snowed-in cabin

Smarter Buildings

A U of T computer scientist is developing a program to help predict – and ultimately reduce – buildings’ energy use

Photo of an hourglass

The True Nature of Time

A century after Einstein proposed his theory of relativity, scientists are still debating how time works

Cool Computing

A new kind of optical switch could allow computers to run 100 times faster - without overheating

We Are Star Stuff

A large asteroid could destroy all life on earth. But a "rain" of extraterrestrial debris long ago may have led to the conditions that started it, says a U of T geologist

The World’s Largest Telescope

As scientists prepare the next-generation space telescope, University of Toronto astronomers are pushing for an even larger ground-based scope

Illustration of Big Ben split between three photo frames

Computer Vision

Want to know where an unidentified picture was taken? A computer program being developed at U of T can help

Photo of a galaxy

To Boldly Go

U of T's Dunlap Institute will step up the search for worlds beyond our solar system

Photo of a building with solar panels on the roof

Sunnier Days

High energy prices are giving solar cells a new-found lustre

God’s Laboratory

This spring, an international team of physicists, including several from U of T, will launch the most ambitious science experiment ever devised. Their goal: to unlock the secrets of the universe

The Big Picture

U of T cosmologists are piecing together the epic table of how the universe has evolved over 14 billion years

The work of Edward S. Rogers Sr., one of the world's most important experimenters in radio, began at U of T in the 1920s

Stay Tuned

The spirit of Edward S. Rogers Sr. is energizing a new wave in communications