BERKELEY, CA — The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation of San Francisco
has awarded $2,377,000 to the University of California at Berkeley’s
Space Sciences Laboratory, in support of the Nearby Supernova Factory
(SNfactory). The grant is intended to further dark energy research
through the study and understanding of nearby Type Ia supernovae, a
special class of very bright exploding stars.
The grant is one of five the Moore Foundation has recently made to the
University of California system in astronomy and astrophysics,
including grants for the creation of a 30-meter telescope (with Caltech)
and to the Mount Wilson Observatory, and grants for studies of stellar
atmospheres and adaptive optics. The SNfactory grant, made through UC
Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, is directed to the “development of
tools critical for greater understanding of Type Ia supernovae as
indicators of dark energy.”
Co-principal investigators are Saul Perlmutter, a senior scientist in
the Physics Division of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley,
and Michael Levi, also a member of Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division and a
senior fellow at UCB’s Space Sciences Laboratory.
This grant builds on the 1998 discovery by Perlmutter and his colleagues
of “dark energy,” a mysterious new energy that dominates the universe,
causing it to fly apart at an accelerated rate. Astronomers and
physicists are baffled by the nature of dark energy, which has become
one of the leading scientific questions of our day. The best tools for
answering this question are exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae.
“Because Type Ia supernovae are so bright, and so nearly uniform in
their brightness, they are incomparable standard candles for studying
the cosmos,” says Perlmutter. “Comparing the brightness and redshift of
distant Type Ia supernovae led us to the discovery that the expansion of
the universe is accelerating. The same kinds of observations will be key
to discovering the nature of the dark energy that drives that
acceleration.”
Choosing among competing theories of dark energy, however, will require
distant Type Ia’s to be measured with unprecedented accuracy — partly
by calibrating and matching these distant supernovae with more closely
observed, nearby Type Ia’s. In the past, observations of nearby Type
Ia’s have been unpredictable, frequently incomplete, and often not the
best examples for comparison with their distant relatives.
“Good as Type Ia supernovae are as standard candles, there is a residual
uncertainty of a few percent in brightness measurements, and thus
distance measurements,” says Levi. “If that uncertainty is due to
something that drifts with redshift, it would be significant to dark
energy studies like SNAP, the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe satellite
that is the leading candidate for DOE and NASA’s Joint Dark Energy
Mission.”
Levi, who is also co-principal investigator with Perlmutter for SNAP,
says that “with this grant we also may learn how to make Type Ia
supernovae even better astronomical standard candles — thus improving
the science capabilities of SNAP and other future projects, something
that we are keenly interested in doing.”
Greg Aldering, the Berkeley Lab astronomer who leads the international
SNfactory project, says, “We designed the SNfactory to discover hundreds
of nearby Type Ia supernovae while they are still brightening. The goal
is to collect 300 such supernovae — close enough to measure with great
precision but far enough away so their redshifts are relatively
undistorted by the gravitational pull of their neighboring galaxies.”
The Moore Foundation grant will support the development of a
high-quality catalog of the brightnesses and spectra of these nearby
supernovae. “We are delighted with the wisdom and foresight shown by the
Moore Foundation in supporting cutting-edge research in the physical
sciences,” says Perlmutter, expressing a sentiment echoed by Levi. The
investigators agree that as a project at the intersection of physics and
astronomy, there was no natural home for this research in the shrinking
federal physical research portfolio.
By capitalizing on the 1998 discovery by the Berkeley group and others
that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, the Moore Foundation
grant paves the way for further discoveries concerning the nature of
dark energy and the ultimate fate of the universe. The investigators
affirm that “this grant will make a big difference in our attempts to
understand why the universe is accelerating; it’s a huge boost for us in
this endeavor.”
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was established in September 2000
by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty. The Foundation
funds outcome-based projects that will measurably improve the quality of
life by creating positive outcomes for future generations. Grant-making
is concentrated in initiatives that support the Foundation’s principal
areas of concern: environmental conservation, science, higher education,
and the San Francisco Bay Area.
UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory is a campus-wide,
multidisciplinary organization that serves to integrate work in space
sciences on campus and to stimulate new programs of research.
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located
in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research
and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at
http://www.lbl.gov.
