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Scientists devise universe-mapping breakthrough
[July 21, 2010]

Scientists devise universe-mapping breakthrough


Jul 21, 2010 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A team of researchers that includes a Carnegie Mellon University astrophysicist and a doctoral student has discovered a potentially more efficient method to map the expansion of the universe and possibly explain the dark energy that is accelerating the expansion.



The method, called "intensity mapping," is described in an article appearing tomorrow in the journal Nature.

Crafted by a team that includes CMU Professor Jeff Peterson and doctoral student Kevin Bandura, intensity mapping measures radio waves emitted from hydrogen coming from distant galaxies.


Currently, the typical way of mapping the universe to chart its expansion is to painstakingly look for individual galaxies and large-scale cosmic structures like the explosion of stars, known as supernovae, and then measure how much they've moved over time.

The discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate came in 1998, but the cause is not known.

With intensity mapping, "We want to look back in time to near the beginning of the universe," said Dr. Peterson, who works at the McWilliams Center of Cosmology at CMU. "That will tell us what dark energy is." The team, which includes researchers at Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the University of Toronto, proved intensity mapping worked by testing it using the Robert C. Byrd Telescope in Green Bank, W.Va.

To put intensity mapping to work, the team hopes to raise about $20 million to build a telescope somewhere largely free of man-made radio, television and cell phone interference. They are considering locations in Canada, China, Mexico, Morocco and South Africa.

"We want to study the last half of the universe," said Dr. Peterson. "And to do that, eventually we'll need our own telescope." More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Sean D. Hamill: [email protected] or 412-263-2579.

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