Few numbers have gotten under astronomers’ skin like the Hubble constant. In fact, experts have debated the value of this single parameter for 90 years, and if astronomers can measure its value with great precision, they’ll be one step closer to solving some of the other grand astronomical mysteries of our age. There’s just one problem: The measurements they’ve taken don’t agree. The discrepancy makes scientists question whether something is amiss in our understanding of the universe.
It took three sky surveys to prepare for a new project that will create the largest 3-D map of the universe’s galaxies and glean new insights about the universe’s accelerating expansion. This Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument project will explore this expansion, driven by a mysterious property known as dark energy, in great detail. The surveys, which wrapped up in March, have amassed images of more than 1 billion galaxies and are essential in selecting celestial objects to target with DESI, now under construction in Arizona.
Postdoc Guillermo Fernandez Moroni is recognized for his outstanding work on the SENSEI experiment at Fermilab. Dark matter experiments are quite sensitive to unwanted background noise, and Moroni found a way to limit this noise for SENSEI, increasing the sensitivity of the experiment by a factor of a thousand, making it the most sensitive of its kind in the world.
Dhuley and his team at the Illinois Accelerator Research Center have received the William E. Gifford Award for their work on cryocooling acceleration cavities. Their research on cryocooler-based systems is paving the way for compact particle accelerators that can operate at ultracold temperatures without complicated cooling infrastructure.
A lot of people say they would like to travel to Mars, but Zoe Townsend doesn’t just talk the talk. As a mechanical engineer at CERN, she knows the importance of putting ideas to the test. To see if she could actually handle the unique challenges posed by living and doing science on another planet, Townsend spent 12 days on a simulated Mars mission in the deserts of Utah.
From CNN, June 21, 2019: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln talks about the recent UFO sightings in the news. It’s plausible that what pilots have been seeing is something with an ordinary explanation, whether it be an instrumental glitch or some other unexplained artifact.
Particle accelerators are some of the most complicated machines in science. In today’s more autonomous era of self-driving cars and vacuuming robots, efforts are going strong to automate different aspects of the operation of accelerators, and the next generation of particle accelerators promises to be more automated than ever. Scientists are working on ways to run them with a diminishing amount of direction from humans.
When teaching a physics lab how to be more LGBTQ+ inclusive, workshop presenters decided to lead with the science.
For over two decades, Spanish institutions have been collaborating with Fermilab. From the Tevatron era to the lab’s current neutrino experiments, Spain has made important contributions.
Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are building the world’s largest digital camera for astronomy and astrophysics — a minivan-sized 3200-megapixel “eye” of the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope that will see light in 2022. In the meantime, the lab has completed its work on a miniature version that will soon be used for testing the telescope and taking LSST’s first images of the night sky. ComCam will help test the observatory once it is installed in Chile later this year.