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Recent News

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Thursday, April 11, 2019

Mandelbaum Elected Spokesperson for LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration

Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Physics Rachel Mandelbaum has been elected as the spokesperson for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope’s (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). Mandelbaum will serve as spokesperson-elect until her two-year term begins on July 1.
Tuesday, January 08, 2019

Dark Energy Survey Completes Six-Year Mission

After scanning in depth about a quarter of the southern skies for six years and cataloging hundreds of millions of distant galaxies, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) will finish taking data tomorrow, on Jan. 9.
Thursday, January 03, 2019

Dark Matter on the Move

Scientists have found evidence that dark matter can be heated up and moved around, as a result of star formation in galaxies. The findings provide the first observational evidence for the effect known as ‘dark matter heating,’ and give new clues as to what makes up dark matter. The research is published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey Maps Dark Matter in the Universe

An international group of researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University’s Rachel Mandelbaum, has released the deepest wide field map of the three-dimensional distribution of matter in the universe ever made and increased the precision of constraints for dark energy with the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey (HSC).
Wednesday, July 04, 2018

The Gaia Sausage: The Collision That Changed the Milky Way

Between 8 billion and 10 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy crashed into our own Milky Way. The dwarf did not survive, but its final act redefined the shape of the Milky Way. Our galaxy has never been the same.
Sunday, October 15, 2017

Scientists Spot Explosive Counterpart of LIGO/Virgo’s Latest Gravitational Waves

Today, a team of scientists using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the primary observing tool of the Dark Energy Survey, was among the first to observe the fiery aftermath of a recently detected burst of gravitational waves, recording images of the first confirmed explosion from two colliding neutron stars ever seen by astronomers. Their data was bolstered by data captured at other observatories around the world.
Friday, October 13, 2017

Stanford’s Dan Akerib to Give CMU’s Bennett-McWilliams Lecture

Do WIMPs rule in the hunt for dark matter? Learn more about dark matter and the current state of the search for dark matter particles when Stanford physicist Dan Akerib gives Carnegie Mellon University’s Bennett-McWilliams Lecture in Cosmology Thursday, Oct. 26, at 4:30 p.m. in the Gates-Hillman Center’s Rashid Auditorium.
Monday, November 14, 2016

Carnegie Mellon Hosts Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Hack Week

While the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is being built in Chile, researchers from around the world are working hard to develop the research infrastructure that they will need to interpret the vast amounts of data that the telescope will create as it surveys the sky over the course of 10 years.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Assembly Bias In Galaxy Clustering

Rachel Mandelbaum, has shown that the relationship between galaxy clusters and their surrounding dark matter halo is more complex than previously thought. The researchers’ findings, published in Physical Review Letters, are the first to use observational data to show that, in addition to mass, a galaxy cluster’s formation history plays a role in how it interacts with its environment.
Monday, September 21, 2015

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Receives Next Step of Approval from DOE

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has reached its next major milestone. The project has received Critical Decision-2 approval from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This approval authorizes the project’s scientific scope, schedule and funding profile, ensuring that the project will be supported into the next decade.
Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Milky Way-Like Galaxies May Have Existed in the Early Universe

A new, large-scale computer simulation has shown for the first time that large disk galaxies, much like our own Milky Way, may have existed in the early days of the universe.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Unexpected Gamma-Ray Emission From Dwarf Galaxy May Point to New Understanding of Dark Matter

A newly discovered dwarf galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way has offered up a surprise — it appears to be radiating gamma rays, according to an analysis by physicists at Carnegie Mellon, Brown and Cambridge universities. The exact source of this high-energy light is uncertain at this point, but it just might be a signal of dark matter lurking at the galaxy’s center.
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