SubscribeAstronomer Geoff Marcy and cosmologist and string theorist Raphael Bousso are among 20 scientists awarded research grants to explore innovative and edgy areas of science. In the case of Marcy and Bousso, these areas are on the border between science and science fiction.
Tag: cosmology
When science borders on science fiction
October 5, 2012:
Farthest supernova yet for measuring cosmic history
January 9, 2013:
The Supernova Cosmology Project, based at Berkeley Lab and headed by UC Berkeley physicist and Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter, has discovered the most distant supernova yet that can be used in cosmological studies. Announced at the American Astronomical Society meeting, it will help answer questions about dark energy and the fate of the universe.
Moore Foundation grant to boost search for dark energy
December 5, 2012:
A $2.1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics will fund revolutionary technologies that the proposed BigBOSS project will use to study dark energy with unprecedented precision. BigBOSS, based at Berkeley Lab, will probe the expansion history of the universe, says BCCP director Uros Seljak. professor of physics.
Nobel Laureate Adam Riess to discuss mystery of dark energy
October 2, 2012:
Nobel Laureate and alumnus Adam G. Riess will give a free public talk at UC Berkeley about groundbreaking research on the expansion of the universe and its implications for dark energy.
Bernard Sadoulet shares Panofsky Prize for dark matter search
September 27, 2012:
The 2013 Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics was awarded jointly to UC Berkeley physicist Bernard Sadoulet and Stanford’s Blas Cabrera for their development of new techniques for searching for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS), the most popular candidate for the unseen dark matter that permeates the universe.
Explosion of galaxy formation lit up early universe
September 4, 2012:
The universe was dark until the first stars began to form, but the universe really lit up once massive hydrogen clouds began birthing galaxies of stars. A new study by postdocs Oliver Zahn and Christian Reichardt, using data from the South Pole Telescope, finds that this period, called the Epoch of Reionization, was later and more explosive than thought.
South Pole Telescope yields new insights on dark energy
April 2, 2012:
Preliminary data from the South Pole Telescope show that Einstein was probably right about the cosmological constant, which some believe can explain dark energy. UC Berkeley astrophysicists William Holzapfel & Adrian Lee, with postdoc Christian Reichardt & others, designed and built the receiver for the telescope, which explores questions of dark energy, dark matter and neutrinos.
A precision map of galaxies at dawn of dark energy era
March 30, 2012:
The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has made the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on some 6 billion years ago. The precision measurements – the best of any galaxy survey, according to UC Berkeley astronomer Martin White – will allow exploration of the enigmatic nature of dark energy.
Physicist Hitoshi Murayama to direct new Kavli institute at Univ. of Tokyo
February 8, 2012:
The Kavli Foundation endowed a new Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo to be directed by theoretical physicist Hitoshi Murayama. While maintaining his position as UC Berkeley professor of physics, Murayama will guide institute research into cosmological questions such as how the universe began, how it will end and what laws govern it.
Gruber Cosmology Prize honors ‘dark matter’ astronomers
June 1, 2011:
UC Berkeley astronomer Marc Davis will share with three other astronomers the 2011 Cosmology Prize of The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, the foundation announced Wednesday.
Astronomer Martin White named 2011 Guggenheim Fellow
April 8, 2011:
Martin White, a professor of physics and astronomy, has been awarded a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship to investigate dark energy using data from the BOSS experiment.
Berkeley Lab’s Saul Perlmutter wins Einstein Medal
February 23, 2011:
Saul Perlmutter, a professor of physics at UC Berkeley and part of the Physics Division at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, has been awarded this year’s Einstein Medal, presented by the Albert Einstein Society. The medal was awarded for “discovering the acceleration of the universe” through the observation of very distant supernovae.
