Last news, from the European EDEN meeting on dark Energy

Last December, more than 100 cosmologists, experimentalists, observers and theoreticians, most of them belonging to the European Dark Energy Network, gathered on the Jussieu Campus, shared by the Universities of Paris VI and VII. Their assembly was convened around one of the most striking subjects of cosmology, namely Dark Energy, to which they dedicated entirely their conference(http://edeninparis.in2p3.fr).

Invoked to account for the acceleration of cosmic expansion that unveiled itself in supernova Hubble diagrams, this new and astonishingly dominant ingredient of the cosmic budget remains, since its observational discovery in 1997, a complete mystery.

Indeed, the nature of Dark Energy and its possible evolution in time are still totally unknown, and cosmologists are left with three theoretical explanations. The acceleration of expansion could be due to a cosmological constant (the favoured, though problematic, option), to a scalar field of various possible degrees of complexity, or to a subtle modification of the laws of gravity.

At the Laboratoire de Physique Nucleaire et de Hautes Energies of the Jussieu Campus, the cosmologists discussed the possible interpretations of current data, the various Dark Energy models, and their predicted effects on the observed universe. The most recent results from the SDSS galaxy survey and the CFHT Legacy Survey were presented. Researchers reviewed the different observational tests (provided by supernovae, weak gravitational lensing, baryon oscillations and galaxy clusters) that have to be applied and combined in order to disentangle all the possibilities. Systematic effects and intrinsic limitations of each cosmological probe were also discussed in detail.

The conference revealed that space borne (like SNAP and DUNE) and ground based (like DarkCam, Pan-Starrs) projects are flourishing all around the globe, with the specific aim of shedding light on Dark Energy. The next few years will definitely be very exciting times for cosmology,from both the theory and the observation sides.

More contributions

24/01/10
The Known Universe
11/09/08
Large Hadron Rap
02/04/08
Meteorites Rich in Amino Acids
01/04/08
New Organic Molecule in Space
06/12/07
LHC: The Six Billion Dollar Questions

Cosmology

By Nabila Aghanim

Last news, from the European EDEN meeting on dark Energy

By Nabila Aghanim

Last December a conference was organised in Paris to discuss the issue of Dark Energe one of the most puzzeling ingredient of the cosmic budget.

More contributions

The Known Universe

Large Hadron Rap

Meteorites Rich in Amino Acids

New Organic Molecule in Space

LHC: The Six Billion Dollar Questions