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.
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.
Our best model of particle physics explains only about 5 percent of 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.
DESI, an instrument to help scientists get to the bottom of the dark energy mystery, is getting a little help from Fermilab.
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.
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.
The France Chicago Center program has been successful at Fermilab, where the organization has supported four collaborations with a total of almost $60,000.
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.
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.