cosmology

From New Scientist, Jan. 25, 2021: The Big Bang left us the universe — and a major set of mysteries around antimatter, dark matter, dark energy, and cosmic inflation. While the Large Hadron Collider looks at what the laws of physics were like a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, Dan Hooper, head of theoretical astrophysics at Fermilab, thinks the answers to these puzzles may depend on better understanding that first fraction of a second — even closer to the universe’s beginning.

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 have found new evidence that its distribution might point to the distribution of dark matter.

From Forbes, Jan. 19, 2021: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln contextualizes the discovery of the most distant (and therefore oldest) supermassive black hole found thus far, which is 10 trillion times brighter than our sun.

From Forbes, Jan. 14, 2021: The Dark Energy Survey recently publicly released an enormous amount of data for anyone to use. This data set contains nearly seven hundred million individual astronomical objects. Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains how collaborators on the Dark Energy Survey study the history of the universe and highlights a number of the scientific findings in DES’s rich trove of data.

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.

From Forbes, Jan. 5, 2021: Two measurements of the speed at which the universe is currently expanding disagree. It could be the first signs that cosmologists will have to make significant changes to their understanding of the cosmos. Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains.

From CNN, Dec. 18, 2020: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln summarizes the results of a group of researchers who, through simulation, reconstruct the family tree of the Milky Way, including the merging of the previously unknown dwarf galaxy Kraken.

Rubin Observatory will bring new capabilities to the studies of dark matter and dark energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy has selected Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to lead a DOE/NSF experiment that combines observatories at the South Pole and in Chile’s high desert. Fermilab plans to be a key partner on the experiment, called CMB-S4, which aims to undertake an unprecedented survey of the early universe.

Sensors for the world’s largest digital camera have snapped their first 3,200-megapixel images at SLAC. Crews at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory took the photo with an extraordinary array of imaging sensors that will become the heart and soul of the future camera of Vera C. Rubin Observatory.