astrophysics

From Smithsonian.com, Nov. 20, 2019: Two research teams have announced that they detected record-breaking gamma ray bursts — powerful outbursts in a distant galaxy that produced photons with high enough energies to be detected by ground-based telescopes for the first time. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper weighs in on results.

From Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 15, 2019: The book “At the Edge of Time” by Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper is a history of the universe, starting with the Big Bang. It’s named a “book with buzz” in this Chicago Sun-Times review.

From Science, Nov. 12, 2019: Three years ago, a team of particle astrophysicists appeared to nix the idea that a faint glow of gamma rays in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy could be emanating from dark matter. But the conclusion that the gamma rays come instead from more ordinary sources may have been too hasty, the team reports in a new study. So the dark matter hypothesis may be alive and well after all. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper is quoted in this article.

From Gizmodo, Nov. 6, 2019: Scientists analyzing data from a defunct satellite say we should all consider that our universe might be round, rather than flat. The consequences, they explain in a new paper, could be crisis-inducing. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper weighs in on this tension in cosmology.

When the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope high in the Chilean Andes becomes fully operational in 2022, its 3.2-gigapixel camera will collect the same amount of data — every night. And it will do so over and over again for ten years. The sky survey will collect so much data that data scientists needed to figure out new ways for astronomers to access it.

From In the Moment, Oct. 31, 2019: In this 42-minute podcast, Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper talks about particles, relativity and the origins of our universe, outlining our growing understanding of the conditions in which our universe began, highlighting what we know about the first few seconds after the Big Bang and how several astronomers and mathematicians throughout history helped us determine that the universe was expanding.

From Descoperă.ro, Oct. 31, 2019: Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment a fost conceput pentru a înţelege mai bine neutrino şi degradarea protonilor. Într-un studiu recent, o echipă de cercetători de la Universitatea Ohio explică faptul că DUNE ar putea să îi ajute pe cercetători să realizeze o serie de descoperiri fundamentale legate de neutrinii solari, notează Phys.

Berkeley Lab’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument aimed its robotic array of 5,000 fiber-optic “eyes” at the night sky Oct. 22 to capture the first images showing its unique view of galaxy light. It was the first test DESI with its nearly complete complement of components. Fermilab contributed key elements to DESI, including the corrector barrel, hexapod, cage and CCDs. Fermilab also provided the online databases used for data acquisition and the software for the instrument’s robotic positioners.

A strong regional tradition of high-energy physics and astrophysics—plus the aspirations of one young researcher—brought the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-ray Observatory to Mexico.

From UChicago News, Oct. 15, 2019: Astronomers at the University of Chicago, MIT and elsewhere have used a massive cluster of galaxies as an X-ray magnifying glass to peer back in time, to nearly 9.4 billion years ago. In the process, they spotted a tiny dwarf galaxy in its very first, high-energy stages of star formation. Fermilab and University of Chicago scientist Brad Benson is a co-author of the study.