Um dos maiores jornais universitários do mundo é o The Daily Texan, aqui da Universidade do Texas. É totalmente gerido por alunos, e o que tem mais prémios de jornalismo.
Hoje traz na primeira página um artigo sobre o Hobby-Eberly Telescope, que faz parte do McDonald Observatory, que pertence à Universidade do Texas em Austin.
O HET está a ser remodelado, para a sua próxima grande revolução no conhecimento: a descoberta de energia negra.
Frases interessantes no artigo:
“The final version of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment will measure the effect of dark energy on the universe by surveying 100 million galaxies, making the largest-ever map of the universe in the process.
Other projects have searched for dark energy in the more recent past, but UT researchers using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope are the only ones examining the more distant past for data on the phenomenon that is pushing the universe apart at an accelerating rate.
Dark energy is a catchall term for the force speeding up the expansion of the universe against scientists’ expectations that its growth would be slowing now.
The idea was to use the Hobby-Eberly telescope to gather information on one million galaxies over the course of three years by using an array of 150-200 spectrographs — depending on how much funding the project receives — which lets astronomers analyze the light gathered. The galaxies are 9-11 billion light-years away, meaning the observations will be from a time in the universe when galaxies were forming.
All other experiments on dark energy will look at the more recent past, when scientists believe that dark energy began exerting a significant influence on the universe. So, the UT project is going against the scientific mainstream.
Now, many are looking at the experiment as a cornerstone for interpreting their own data from the recent past.
The survey is set to be finished by 2013, before any other dark energy experiments.
The project will monopolize the telescope for the next three years.”
Vejam o vídeo que consta na página do jornal.
Karl Gebhardt, com quem estive há uns minutos atrás, disse estas frases também bastante interessante:
“This is going to be one of the most powerful telescopes in the world after we’re done with it”.
“We really are kicking ass right now in terms of where we think we are compared to our competition”.
“It may not be dark; it may not be energy. All it is, is just that our universe is expanding much faster than we think, and we can’t explain it.”
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