Highlights

New result rivals precision of cosmic microwave background measurements, supports view that dark matter and dark energy make up most of the cosmos   Imagine planting a single seed and, with great precision, being able to predict the exact height of the tree that grows from it. Now imagine traveling to the future and snapping… More »

The PICO-60 detector was originally called “COUPP-60,” with COUPP standing for “Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics.” It was designed and built by Fermilab in collaboration with the University of Chicago and Indiana University, South Bend. Work began at Fermilab in 2005, and, after extensive testing, the detector was moved to SNOLAB in 2012. “We’ve been… More »

New dwarf galaxy candidates could mean our sky is more crowded than we thought Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey, using one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, have discovered eight more faint celestial objects hovering near our Milky Way galaxy. Signs indicate that they, like the objects found by the same team earlier this year, are… More »

Analysis will help scientists understand the role that dark matter plays in galaxy formation Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have released the first in a series of dark matter maps of the cosmos. These maps, created with one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, are the largest contiguous maps created at this level of detail… More »

New Fermilab experiment will test the nature of the universe A unique experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory called the Holometer has started collecting data that will answer some mind-bending questions about our universe – including whether we live in a hologram. Much like characters on a television show would… More »

The cosmic microwave background is the radiant heat left over from the big bang. It was emitted nearly 14 billion years ago, just 380,000 years after the big bang, and has traveled across literally the entire observable universe. This makes the CMB an ideal backlight to find the most massive, distant structures in the universe,… More »

Last month the Holometer, Fermilab experiment E-990, reached its design luminosity, building up more than 1 kilowatt of infrared laser power stored in a 40-meter-long Michelson interferometer. This light intensity corresponds to more than 1022 (ten billion trillion) photons per second hitting the interferometer optics. It also allows scientists to measure the optics’ positions to… More »