astrophysics

From Science News, June 19, 2018: Fermilab physicist Dan Hooper proposes that, to offset a future cosmic energy shortage caused by the accelerating expansion of the universe, a super-advanced civilization could pluck stars from other galaxies and bring them home. It’s a far-out idea, tackling a dilemma in a future so distant that human beings can hardly fathom it: 100 billion years from now, each neighborhood of the universe will be marooned as if on a cosmic island, with resources from the rest of the universe inaccessible.

From PBS’s NOVA Wonders, May 30, 2018: Fermilab’s Josh Frieman and Brian Nord appear in this episode on the dark sector.

From Newsweek, May 16, 2018: In a new paper, a team of scientists describe how it uncovered a new space object in 2014 using data from the Dark Energy Survey.

From Quanta, May 15, 2018: Thanks to Dark Energy Survey data, astronomers have spotted a distant world whose orbit is so odd that it is likely to have been shepherded by Planet Nine.

From Gizmodo, May 18: Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey spotted a celestial object that, according to a new paper published recently on the arXiv, is the “most extreme Trans-Neptunian object found to date.”

From Astronomy, Feb. 22, 2018: The supernova, dubbed DES16C2nm, was first detected back in August 2016 by the Dark Energy Survey, which is currently mapping several hundred million galaxies in order to learn more about the mysterious force known as dark energy.

From Newsweek, Feb. 21, 2018: DES162nm was first spotted in August 2016 using the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The investigations were part of an international collaboration known as the Dark Energy Survey—a project designed to map hundreds of millions of galaxies in a search for the mysterious force that is thought to be behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Installation has begun for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, a next-generation astrophysics tool. Fermilab is managing key parts of the construction of the instrument, which will begin its five-year observation run in 2019.

From Science News, Jan. 26, 2018: Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper comments on the possibility of clumps of dark matter sailing through the Milky Way and other galaxies.

From Seeker, Jan. 23, 2018: Seeker, Discovery Digital’s new initiative, produced this video about the Dark Energy Survey’s recent results.