National Science Foundation funds five-year, $2.35 million effort
By: David Campbell
Princeton University and its partners have received a $2.35 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study the physics of the early universe, Princeton astrophysics Professor David Spergel said Monday.
The grant, to be disbursed over five years, will fund research opportunities for students taking part in the international, multi-institutional space-survey project, said Professor Spergel, who is associate chairman of the university’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences and co-principal director of the project.
The Princeton-led Southern Optical Astronomical Survey seeks to study the growth of galaxies and gain a better understanding of the physics of the early universe.
Among the questions the project seeks to address are the nature of dark energy; how galaxies affect their environments; how environment affects galaxies and their properties; and what is the distribution of mass in the universe.
Dark energy accounts for 70 percent of the total mass of the universe, but researchers don’t quite know what it is. Ordinary matter, made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, comprises about 5 percent of the total mass, and a mysterious substance called dark matter makes up the remaining 25 percent.
Professor Spergel said the survey project is ambitious, both scientifically and logistically, pointing to the multiple players, geographical locations and funding sources involved.
"We’re hoping that this really establishes a program of international collaboration," he said. "Intellectually, we’re hoping to use this as a way to provide substantial research training for students undergrads, grad students and postdocs at Princeton, and in South Africa and Chile."
Professor Spergel co-directs the project with Professor Lyman Page and Professor Suzanne Staggs, both physicists at Princeton; Professor Joseph Fowler, assistant professor of physics at Princeton; and Robert Lupton, senior research scientist in astrophysical sciences at Princeton.
The Princeton scientists are teaming with physics and astronomy researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania, and will work in collaboration with researchers at Universidad Católica in Chile and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
In search of answers, researchers will study a patch of the southern sky that provides a snapshot of the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and integrate data from a number of different instruments.
Observations from the new Southern African Large Telescope, the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, will allow participants to study clusters of galaxies to learn how they form and evolve.
Meanwhile, components of a new radio telescope, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, are being tested on the roof of Princeton’s Jadwin Hall.
The telescope will be constructed in the Atacama Desert in Chile, an exceedingly dry, high-altitude region known for dark skies and exceptional viewing weather. Its first scientific data is expected in late 2007.
With additional support from Princeton’s Institute for International and Regional Studies, Professor Spergel plans a series of summer schools and workshops for students.
Because the participating institutions are in two hemispheres, summer school will take place every six months, he joked.
Professor Spergel and Professor Page, along with several graduate students, will travel to South Africa for the first session in January 2006. Princeton will host the second session in June 2006, he said.
Professor Spergel said undergraduate students will travel to South Africa this summer and to Chile in subsequent years to begin observational work, which he said he hopes will evolve into topics for junior papers and senior theses.
"I think this will be a really nice way to send some physics and astronomy students to do their junior year abroad," he said.

