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UrduCompleting a nearly 30-year marathon, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has calibrated more than 40 “milepost markers” of space and time to help scientists measure the expansion rate of the universe to a precision of just over 1%. The measurement is about eight times more precise than Hubble’s expected capability.
Tag: Cosmology
FSU astrophysicist chosen for key role in international science collaboration mapping remnant light from the Big Bang
A Florida State University cosmologist has been selected to co-lead a Department of Energy and National Science Foundation project investigating the faint leftover radiation from the Big Bang known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB.FSU Associate Professor of Physics Kevin Huffenberger and University of Chicago Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Jeff McMahon will serve as co-spokespersons for the so-called CMB-S4 science collaboration, a project to provide insight into the most energetic processes in the universe and probe physics from the universe to subatomic particles.
BICEP3 tightens the bounds on cosmic inflation
A new analysis of the South Pole-based telescope’s cosmic microwave background observations has all but ruled out several popular models of inflation.
A bigger nursery for the solar system’s first formed solids
The earliest solids formed in the solar system give clues to what radioactive species were made by the young sun, and which ones were inherited. By studying isotopic variations of the elements vanadium (V) and strontium (Sr), an international team of researchers including scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found that those variations are not caused by irradiation from the sun but are produced by condensation and evaporation reactions in the early solar system.
Space odyssey: Argonne scientists among the first to study asteroid fragments
Argonne scientists at the Advanced Photon Source are among the first to study tiny fragments of near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu, collected by a Japanese space mission. These fragments could tell us long-hidden secrets about how our planet and solar system were formed.
Hubble Snapshot of ‘Molten Ring’ Galaxy Prompts New Research
In this image, a remote galaxy is greatly magnified and distorted by the effects of gravitationally warped space. After its public release, astronomers used the picture to measure the galaxy’s distance of 9.4 billion light-years. This places the galaxy at the peak epoch of star formation in cosmic evolution.
How to catch a perfect wave: Scientists take a closer look inside the perfect fluid
Scientists have reported new clues to solving a cosmic conundrum: How the quark-gluon plasma – nature’s perfect fluid – evolved into the building blocks of matter during the birth of the early universe.
Sculpted by starlight: A meteorite witness to the solar system’s birth
Researchers examine a 4.6 billion- year-old rock to better understand the solar system’s beginning, and a modern mystery.
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SLAC’s Panofsky fellows talk about what makes their research so exciting
Among the many scientists who push the frontiers of knowledge at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the Panofsky fellows stand out.
DOE names six Argonne scientists to receive Early Career Research Program awards
Six Argonne scientists receive Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program Awards.
36 Dwarf Galaxies Had Simultaneous “Baby Boom” of New Stars
Three dozen dwarf galaxies far from each other had a simultaneous “baby boom” of new stars, an unexpected discovery that challenges current theories on how galaxies grow and may enhance our understanding of the universe. Galaxies more than 1 million light-years apart should have completely independent lives in terms of when they give birth to new stars. But galaxies separated by up to 13 million light-years slowed down and then simultaneously accelerated their birth rate of stars, according to a Rutgers-led study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Successful Start of Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Follows Record-Setting Trial Run
A five-year quest to map the universe and unravel the mysteries of “dark energy” is beginning officially today, May 17, at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. To complete its quest, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will capture and study the light from tens of millions of galaxies and other distant objects in the universe.
Science Snapshots From Berkeley Lab
Science Snapshots From Berkeley Lab – Water purification, infant-warming device, cuff-based heart disease monitor, ancient magnetic fields
Unlocking the secrets of Earth’s early atmosphere
Research partly conducted at the Advanced Photon Source helped scientists discover the composition of Earth’s first atmosphere. What they found raises questions about the origin of life on Earth.
Argonne’s 2021 Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellows bring new energy, promise to their fields
The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is proud to welcome five new FY21 Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellows to campus, each chosen for their incredible promise in their respective fields.
Fermilab scientist Juan Estrada wins American Physical Society Instrumentation Award
A physicist making great advances in particle detector technology, Estrada is recognized by the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields for his creation and development of novel applications for CCD technology that probe wide-ranging areas of particle physics, including cosmology, dark matter searches, neutrino detection and quantum imaging.
Precision measurements of intracluster light suggest possible link to dark matter
Faint light from rogue stars not bound to galaxies has been something of a mystery to scientists. The dimness of this intracluster light makes it difficult to measure, and no one knows how much there is. Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey, led by Fermilab, have made the most radially extended measurement of this light ever, and they’ve found that its distribution might point to the distribution of dark matter.
Mira’s Last Journey: exploring the dark universe
Scientists used a supercomputer to perform one of the five largest cosmological simulations ever — the Last Journey. This simulation will provide crucial data for sky maps to aid leading cosmological experiments.
Dark Energy Survey makes public catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects
The international collaboration, including Fermilab, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, NOIRLab and others, releases a massive, public collection of astronomical data and calibrated images from six years of surveys. This data release is one of the largest astronomical catalogs issued to date.
Hubble Watches Exploding Star Fade into Oblivion
Hubble Space Telescope images have been assembled into a time-lapse video of an exploding star fading into oblivion inside a distant galaxy. The video compresses one-year’s worth of observations into seconds. When it exploded the supernova was as bright as 5 billion Suns.
Sensors of world’s largest digital camera snap first 3,200-megapixel images at SLAC
Crews at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have taken the first 3,200-megapixel digital photos – the largest ever taken in a single shot – with an extraordinary array of imaging sensors that will become the heart and soul of the future camera of Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Auralee Edelen and Wai Ling Wu receive 2020 Panofsky Fellowships at SLAC
Their work uses machine learning to transform the way scientists tune particle accelerators for experiments and solve longstanding mysteries in astrophysics and cosmology.
NRAO’s Baseline Episode 4: Measuring the Expanding Universe
How fast is the universe expanding? We don’t know for sure.Astronomers study cosmic expansion by measuring the Hubble constant. They have measured this constant in several different ways, but some of their results don’t agree with each other. This disagreement, or tension, in the Hubble constant is a growing controversy in astronomy.
Explosive nuclear astrophysics
An international team has made a key discovery related to “presolar grains” found in some meteorites. This discovery has shed light on stellar explosions and the origin of chemical elements. It has also provided a new method for astronomical research.
Dark Energy Survey census of the smallest galaxies hones the search for dark matter
Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have used observations of the smallest known galaxies to better understand dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. The smallest galaxies can contain hundreds to thousands of times more dark matter than normal visible matter, making them ideal laboratories for studying this mysterious substance. By performing a rigorous census of small galaxies surrounding our Milky Way, scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have been able to constrain the fundamental particle physics that governs dark matter.
Scientists Explore Signals for a Quantum Universe
New research findings about the origin of structure in the universe could lead to more connections between cosmology and the study of quantum information.
Scientists publish largest 3D map of the universe ever created
A new three-dimensional map, built after decades of collecting and analyzing data from the skies, shows how the universe has changed and expanded over an 11-billion-year period. The map, published online late Sunday, is the largest 3D map of the universe ever created, and shows that about 6 billion years ago, the universe began accelerating more rapidly than it had in the 8 billion years that came before.
Five thousand eyes on the skies: Scientists choreograph robots to observe distant galaxies
Scientists have begun operating the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, to create a 3-D map of over 30 million galaxies and quasars that will help them understand the nature of dark energy. The new instrument is the most advanced of its kind, with 5,000 robotic positioners that will enable scientists to gather more than 20 times more data than previous surveys. Researchers at Fermilab helped develop the software that will direct these positioners to focus on galaxies several billion light-years away and are currently in the process of fine-tuning the programs used before the last round of testing later this year.
Drones Help Calibrate Radio Telescope at Brookhaven Lab
Cosmologists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are experimenting with a prototype radio telescope, called the Baryon Mapping Experiment (BMX). Built at the Lab in 2017, the prototype serves as a testbed for managing radio interference and developing calibration techniques. Lessons learned from the prototype could pave the way for Brookhaven to develop a much larger radio telescope in collaboration with other national Labs, universities, and international partners.
New Distance Measurements Bolster Challenge to Basic Model of Universe
A cosmic measurement technique independent of all others adds strong evidence pointing to a problem with the current theoretical model describing the composition and evolution of the Universe.
Theoretical breakthrough shows quantum fluids rotate by corkscrew mechanism
Scientists performed simulations of merging rotating superfluids, revealing a peculiar corkscrew-shaped mechanism that drives the fluids into rotation without the need for viscosity.
Meet the Intern Using Quantum Computing to Study the Early Universe
During an internship at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Juliette Stecenko is using modern supercomputers and quantum computing platforms to perform astronomy simulations that may help us better understand where we came from.
Largest collection of 3D supernova simulations leads to new insights on explosion dynamics
Researchers using DOE supercomputers, including Argonne’s Theta, produced pivotal 3D simulations to elucidate the physics behind the collapse of massive stars.
Argonne and CERN weigh in on the origin of heavy elements
Nuclear physicists from Argonne National Laboratory led an international physics experiment conducted at CERN that utilizes novel techniques developed at Argonne to study the nature and origin of heavy elements in the universe.
Looking Up From the Mountaintop: Q&A with a Telescope Instrument’s Lead Observer
In this Q&A Satya Gontcho A Gontcho, a lead observer for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), shares her experiences at the DESI site near Tucson, Arizona, including evening observing stints to run through detailed checklists and probe how the instrument’s components are working.
Berkeley Lab Cosmologists Are Top Contenders in Machine Learning Challenge
In a machine learning challenge dubbed the 2020 Large Hadron Collider Olympics, a team of cosmologists from Berkeley Lab developed a code that best identified a mock signal hidden in simulated particle-collision data.
Meteorites lend clues to origins of earliest history of solar system
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and a collaborator from the University of Münster reviewed recent work that shows how meteorites exhibit a fundamental isotopic dichotomy between non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC – rocks or sediments containing carbon or its compounds) groups, which most likely represent material from the inner and outer solar system.
Six Berkeley Lab Scientists Named AAAS Fellows
Six scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Russian astronomer comments on Nobel Prize in physics
MOSCOW (MIPT) — The discovery by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz was momentous in that they made it very clear how exoplanets may be sought using what is known as the radial velocity method, says Alexander Rodin from the Moscow Institute…
AIP Congratulates 2019 Nobel Prize Winners in Physics
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 8, 2019 — The 2019 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded today to James Peebles, Michel Mayor, and Didier Queloz “for contributions to the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos.” “AIP is delighted…
AI technique does double duty spanning cosmic and subatomic scales
While high-energy physics and cosmology seem worlds apart in terms of sheer scale, physicists and cosmologists at Argonne are using similar machine learning methods to address classification problems for both subatomic particles and galaxies.
Department of Energy Announces $21.4 Million for Quantum Information Science Research
The following news release was issued on Aug. 26, 2019 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It announces funding that DOE has awarded for research in quantum information science related to particle physics and fusion energy sciences. Scientists at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory are principal investigators on two of the 21 funded projects.
Deep Learning Reveals Mysteries of Deep Space
The Science How do you determine the measurable “things” that describe the nature of our universe? To answer that question, researchers used CosmoFlow, a deep learning technique, running on a National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center supercomputer. They analyzed large,…