virus: The race to find out how the universe will end

From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 12:46:08 MDT


Sorry, folks, I didn't buy this months Discover and I can't find this article on-line, so you'll have to stop by your local bookstore and read it over coffee. It's worth the trip.

Here's on-line teaser.....

DISCOVER Vol. 23 No. 9 (September 2002)

The race to find out how the universe will end Two young astronomers, each backed by cutting-edge technology and a high-powered scientific brain trust, run a daring competition to see who can be first to uncover one of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos By Corey S. Powell

Corey S. Powell has been an editor at Discover since 1997. This article is adapted from his just-published book, God in the Equation. Copyright © 2002 by Corey S. Powell. Reprinted by permission of The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York.

Saul Perlmutter darts around his modest office at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a cluster of drab buildings nestled in the hills above the University of California campus. With his edgy movements, shaggy hair, and Woody Allen-ish gestures, he could be mistaken for a computer programmer. But it's soon clear that these institutional-lab white walls and gray steel bookshelves- even the rolling landscape outside- are only a minuscule part of who he is. Riffling through a stack of journal reprints and computer printouts, Perlmutter fishes out an article titled "Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae." During the past 10 years, working in step with a rival group of scientists centered at Harvard University, Perlmutter and his collaborators have peered to the far edge of what astronomer Edwin Hubble called "the dim boundary- the utmost limits of our telescopes." The results, summarized in this innocuous-sounding document, have rewritten the saga of the Big Bang. They offer both a new chronicle of how the universe has evolved and an unnerving prophecy of how it may end.

Full text of this article can be found in the current issue of Discover Magazine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RELATED WEB SITES: Powell, Corey S. God in the Equation: How Einstein Became the Prophet of the New Religious Era. New York: The Free Press, 2002. For more about this title, including an excerpt and author bio, visit www. simonsays. com.

High-Z Supernova Search Web site: cfa-www. harvard. edu/cfa/oir/Research/ supernova/HighZ. html.

Supernova Cosmology Project Web site: www. supernova. lbl. gov.

A listing of supernova-related educational Web sites, research groups, and individual researchers can be found at rsd-www. nrl. navy. mil/7212/montes/sne. html.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © Copyright 2002 The Walt Disney Company.



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