Supernovaes and Dark Matter
About 70% of our universe is composed by dark energy, most of the scientist considered this phenomena as a complete mystery and is one of the most important problems of astronomy today.
Dark energy is one of the Universe components; it was discovered in 1998 and is responsible for the Space Expansion Acceleration. Current observations suggest that this energy comes from the empty space, a cosmological constant concept, which was originally introduced by Albert Einstein in 1917.
But because we do not have a physical framework to guide our measurements in this area, we must trust on detailed measurements of the cosmic expansion history in order to get some local clues about the general nature of this force: It change with time? Is it consistent?
Accurate distances to supernovae -explosive death of a star, a real cosmic beacon- provide a map of the acceleration history and the general form of dark energy and allows us to answer those questions.
A supernova is an extraordinary show: Stars released its envelope at speeds of thousands of kilometers (per second). Then, they become partially radioactive clouds, still expanding. In some cases, we are able to observe at distances of billions of light years (when the universe was very young). Supernova remnants flooded the interstellar medium with heavy elements.
The most important features of Supernovae are: brightness, large size, high expansion velocities and the presence of radioactive gas. Observationally we classified them into types: I and II.
Principal Investigator : Alejandro Clocchiatti
Associated Investigators: José Maza, Giulano Pignata and Franz Bauer.
