Thursday 1 October 2009

New search for Dark Energy goes back in time

This is a previous optical image of one of the approximately 200 quasars captured in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) "first light" exposure is shown at top, with the BOSS spectrum of the object at bottom. The spectrum allows astronomers to determine the object's redshift. With millions of such spectra, BOSS will measure the geometry of the Universe. Credit: David Hogg, Vaishali Bhardwaj, and Nic Ross of SDSS-III

Baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) sounds like it could be technobabble from a Star Trek episode. BAO is real, but astronomers are searching for these particle fluctuations to do what seems like science fiction: look back in time to find clues about dark energy. The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey(BOSS), a part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), took its "first light" of astronomical data last month, and will map the expansion history of the Universe.

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© nancy for Universe Today, 2009
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