Shedding Light on Dark Energy with SNAP – Gregory Tarle
Date: Thu. February 5th, 2004, 4:15 pm-5:15 pmLocation: Rockefeller 301
Recent experiments have confirmed that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, driven by a presently unknown form of “dark energy.” To determine what the dark energy is as opposed to that it is will require a new generation of experiments of unprecedented precision. An international team of scientists is now planning for a SuperNova /Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a new type of space telescope with a wide field optical-to-near-infrared imager and spectrograph. SNAP will observe thousands of supernovae over a wide range of redshifts to measure the expansion history of the universe. By examining how the equation of state of the universe evolves over cosmological time, SNAP will shed light on the nature of the dark energy that now makes up fully two-thirds of our universe.