Dark Energy Survey completes six-year mission

The Dark Energy Camera mounted on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The final day of data-taking for the Dark Energy Survey is Jan. 9.

Dark Energy Survey completes six-year mission

Press release

After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloguing hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey will finish taking data on Jan. 9. DES scientists recorded data from more than 300 million distant galaxies. More than 400 scientists from over 25 institutions around the world have been involved in the project, hosted by Fermilab. The collaboration has already produced about 200 academic papers, with more to come.

Topping off a telescope with new tools to explore dark energy

From Berkeley Lab, Dec. 4, 2018: Key components of Berkeley Lab’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument are installed after months of planning, prep work. A team at Fermilab built the corrector, hexapod, and other top-end support structures. The structures are designed to align the lenses with an accuracy of tens of microns (millionths of a meter) – similar to the width of the thinnest human hair.

Five mysteries the Standard Model can’t explain

Symmetry feature

Our best model of particle physics explains only about 5 percent of the universe.

The scientific theories battling to explain the universe

From CNN, Aug. 17, 2018: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln discusses the conflict between superstring theory and the phenomenon of dark energy, mentioning the Dark Energy Survey.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument will attach to the Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, shown here. Photo: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, © 2010, The Regents of the University of California, through the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Mapping the universe in 3-D: Fermilab contributes to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Fermilab feature

DESI, an instrument to help scientists get to the bottom of the dark energy mystery, is getting a little help from Fermilab.

UQ astrophysicist is star material

From UQ News, Aug. 1, 2018: A scientist from the Dark Energy Survey, which is hosted by Fermilab, is selected for the television program Australian Survivor.

The endless search

From FAPESP’s Pesquisa, March 2018: International researchers are constantly looking for lighter particles in the hope of finding dark matter, including at the DarkSide-50 experiment, CDMS and the Dark Energy Survey.

How an advanced civilization could stop dark energy from preventing their future exploration

From Universe Today, June 20, 2018: A Fermilab astrophysicist recently conducted a study that indicates how a sufficiently advanced civilization might be able to harvest Local Group stars and prevent them from expanding outward.

Study reveals reason aliens may be snatching stars and caging them in megastructures

From Russia Today, June 21, 2018: Expansion of the universe, thought to be further accelerated by dark energy, is flinging matter apart, while galaxies are being pushed away from each other. This is a challenge alien technologies will have to deal with in order for them to survive, Fermilab’s Dan Hooper writes in a new study.

To combat an expanding universe, aliens could hoard stars

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.