This month’s physicist in focus is Lilly Pyras, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah. Lilly works with Professor Dennis Soldin’s group on cosmic ray air showers, an exciting subject that explores the origins of charged particles from deep space that are created in some of the most extreme environments in the Universe. Studying these particles unveils the history and dynamics of their sources, which are enormous particle accelerators reaching energies far beyond what any terrestrial facility could achieve.
What draws Lilly to astroparticle physics in particular is this collision of scales, using the smallest particles we can detect to understand the largest, most energetic structures in the cosmos. It’s also, she notes, a window into physics that would otherwise be impossible to study, a laboratory we obtain essentially for free! A caveat she ruefully acknowledges is that, while a particle accelerator lets one pick and choose the kinds of particles under study, with cosmic rays, we understand much less about the initial conditions and therefore need a large detector to pin down as many particles as possible for analysis.
“The smallest particles can tell you the biggest stories.”
Lilly Pyras
Before her current project, Lilly did her PhD on the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G), where she got to work on everything from simulation software and hardware, to a field deployment to Summit Station in Greenland to help deploy the detector into the ice! Her time in Greenland left a deep impression on Lilly, with the sun dogs created by the sun interacting with ice crystals in the polar air a particular highlight.
A keen student of the arts, Lilly pursued a degree in art history as an undergraduate in Berlin, reasoning that a society leaves behind traces of itself in its images and icons. By studying the art of a certain era, it provides context clues for what a society valued about itself. As people have been creating art throughout human history, this forms a chain all the way to ancient civilizations. This intersection of space-time led her to consider the physical analogue in more detail, writing a dissertation on the theory of relativity in the arts. One artist in particular she’d like to highlight is El Lissitzky, whose Wolkenbügel—a tower sitting above a railway and road crossing—translated Einstein’s ideas about time and space directly into an architectural vision. Her artist’s eye led her to study visuals in the sciences and how best to extract meaning from plots and figures.
Outside her research, Lilly loves the outdoors and may be found exploring the many mountains around Salt Lake City or tearing it up on the walls at the local climbing gyms. It’s this same curiosity, for patterns, images, and the stories hidden inside, that continues to drive her work today. With her varied experiences and unique insights into the world around her, Lilly sees herself as the one to get the job done and to learn new things along the way!