The Rubin Observatory’s landmark survey traces its origins to the founding of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and a catalytic act of philanthropy.

The South Pole boasts some of the most extreme living conditions on the planet. Sustaining life is nearly impossible at the bottom of the world, but it is also a haven for cosmology research, and specifically for observing the microwave universe. Just after the beginning of the Universe, cosmologists believe that there was a period of extremely rapid expansion called "inflation." Measuring the CMB polarization could definitively determine if early-Universe inflation occurred.

Throughout the universe, two entities are playing an invisible cosmic game of tug-of-war: dark matter and dark energy. Like game-day analysts, cosmologists have found myriad ways to dissect this match. One promising tool is weak gravitational lensing, which we can use to map the cosmic web’s clumpiness, and thus probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

With survey operations set to begin this fall, the Rubin control room at SLAC will serve as a key hub for training and remote observing support for the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

 

By Gaëlle Suter

A new Stanford center is uniting astronomers and data scientists to decipher the cosmos—and reinvent the future of discovery.

In the last post, we talked about how astronomers are pushing our frontiers of knowledge by detecting particles other than light emitted by celestial objects. However, the story doesn’t end with cosmic rays and neutrinos. Gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself—represent perhaps the most peculiar frontier beyond light.

The European Physical Society has awarded a top prize to the teams behind the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has yielded better understanding of pulsars, supermassive black holes, neutron stars, and more.

For millennia, astronomy has been the study of light. In the 20th century, new technologies unlocked our ability to see light beyond the visible spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays (see Fig. 1, below). Now the 21st century stands to be the century in which astronomy pushes beyond the confines of light and begins to detect new signals such as neutrinos, cosmic rays, and gravitational waves in the era of "multi-messenger astronomy."

Faculty and students gathered at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for the unveiling of the first photos from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time – a dream they made reality over decades of collaborative work.