NSF Grants UOC $21.4 Million for Next-Generation Telescopes To Map Universe's Light

Friday - October 27 2023, 11:42 UTC - 1 year ago

The US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation are set to jointly fund the CMB-S4 project, a $800 million project aiming to construct telescopes in Chile & Antarctica to look for gravitational waves that are thought to result from the Big Bang. The National Science Foundation is awarding up to $21.4 million to the University of Chicago next year to develop final designs for the next-generation telescopes.

In a quest to advance the knowledge concerning the beginning of the universe, known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, the National Science Foundation is set to grant up to $21.4 million to the University of Chicago. The agreement will see $3.7 million awarded to the team next year, in a project aimed at developing final designs for a next-generation set of telescopes that will map the light from the earliest moments of the universe.

The project, named CMB-S4, will be led by researchers at UOC and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and aims to construct infrastructure and telescopes in Antarctica and Chile in order to look for gravitational waves that are thought to be "primordial"—that is, the vibrations that result from the Big Bang itself. The team says their efforts will also "map the microwave light from the cosmos in incredible detail and reveal how the universe evolved over time, as well as investigate the mystery known as dark matter," said a statement.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation are proposing to jointly fund the entire CMB-S4 project, which is estimated to cost around $800 million and be fully operational in the early 2030s. At now, 450 scientists from over 100 universities across 20 countries are involved in the partnership.

Origins of universe .

The light that is still making its way across the cosmos from the first seconds after the Big Bang is known as the cosmic microwave background. Scientists have created incredibly complex instruments to map that light because it contains information about the creation of the universe, both from spacecraft and from the ground in the Chilean Atacama Plateau and at the NSF's South Pole Station, including the current South Pole Telescope, which has been in operation since 2007.

According to the team, in order to address the most fundamental questions, such as whether our universe originated with an inflationary outburst at the beginning of time would require a new generation of telescopes. To make such discoveries possible, the CMB-S4 project will employ telescopes at two locations: two huge telescopes in the highlands of Chile, and a large telescope together with nine smaller ones in Antarctica.

The Chilean telescopes would survey a large area of the sky in an effort to provide a more accurate and comprehensive image of the cosmic microwave background, which would aid in our understanding of the universe's development and matter distribution. The telescopes at the NSF's South Pole Station, meanwhile, would examine a more limited area of the sky in great detail over an extended period of time. "The South Pole is the only location that allows a telescope to look at one place in the sky continuously because it’s at the pole where the rest of the Earth spins around," said Jeff Zivick, deputy project manager for CMB-S4, in a statement.

Complex design .

The design work for the new telescopes and infrastructure at the sites will be partially funded by the new National Science Foundation award. From the initial concept to the finished design, telescope components must be tested, analyzed, and refined before the parts can be delivered to the field.