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| Image: The discovery
of Dysnomia,
the moon of Eris, from the W. M. Keck Observatory.
Eris appears in the center, while the moon is the small
dot at the three o'clock position. Credit: Mike Brown,
W. M. Keck Observatory. |
Astronomer Mike
Brown has spent the past ten years systematically surveying
the sky over the Northern Hemisphere, searching for large objects
in the Kuiper Belt, the region of our solar system past Neptune.
Brown has been incredibly successful in finding such objects,
including Eris, Santa (a football-shaped object with two moons),
and Sedna, an object which inhabits the region beyond the Kuiper
Belt. Brown’s discovery of Eris, which has 27% more mass than
Pluto, sparked a year-long debate which ultimately resulted
in a fundamental realignment of our conventional picture of
the solar system. If Pluto, which is smaller than Eris, was
a planet, then Eris must be a planet too. Or, conversely, if
Eris was not a planet, than Pluto was not a planet either.
Such was the final determination by the International Astronomical
Union, whose General Assembly met in Prague in late 2006 to
issue a formal definition of what is and what is not a planet.
Neither Eris nor Pluto met all the criteria for planetary status,
since they had not “cleared the neighborhood” around their
orbits of other smaller bodies. Pluto was officially “plutoed,” or
demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet, along with Eris and
several other Kuiper Belt objects. The verb “plutoed” had entered
our vocabulary, roughly defined as “suddenly shot down to size.”
As the ninth planet gradually disappears from solar system
models and textbooks in classrooms across the country, we are
reminded of the reasons why we humans explore and engage in
the process of scientific discovery. So that we can better
understand the nature of our world, old models are cast aside
in the face of new data which no longer support them. Brown’s
research made possible a new understanding of the heavenly
bodies which inhabit our cosmic neighborhood. As a natural
part of this process, the nine-planet model of the solar system
that we grew up with was discarded in favor of a new alignment.
Learn more about The New Solar System. 
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| Image: A small portion
of a relatively wide-angle image obtained on April
7, 1997 (top right), and again on April 28,
1997 (top left). Upon digital subtraction
of the April 7th image from the April 28th image, a
supernova candidate is visible (bottom right).
A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image obtained on May
12, 1997 (bottom left) shows supernova “SN
1997cj” clearly. Image by Brian P. Schmidt and the
High-z Supernova Search Team. |
“If Newton were restricted, in working through the theory
of gravitation, to apples and forbidden to look at the motion
of the Moon or the Earth, it is clear he would not have made
much progress. It is precisely being able to look at the effects
down here, look at the effects up there, comparing the two,
which permits, encourages, the development of a broad and general
theory.”
– Carl Sagan, from The Varieties of Scientific
Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Penguin
Press 2006
For the past fifteen years, scientists have been using LRIS,
the Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, on the Keck I Telescope
to study extremely distant exploding stars, or supernovae.
By measuring these objects with the precision and power of
the Keck Telescope and instrumentation, researchers can determine
their distance, how far back in time we are seeing them, and
how much the universe has expanded while their light was traveling
toward us. Together, these measurements provided an unexpected
discovery about the history of the universe.
“What we found has rocked the world of astronomy and physics,” says
Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley Astronomy professor and High-z
Supernova Search Team member. “The expansion of the universe
is speeding up with time, rather than slowing down as expected
due to normal, attractive gravity. It's like you throw this
apple up, and it zooms away from you faster and faster, instead
of slowing down. Over the largest scales, the universe appears
to be dominated by mysterious, repulsive ‘dark energy,’ not
by attractive gravity,” marvels Filippenko. At the University
of Cambridge on September 7, Filippenko was acknowledged for
his contributions as a member of both of the two teams receiving
the prestigious 2007
Guber cosmology prize for this “crazy result.”
To understand the physical nature of dark energy, scientists
need to rethink the current “laws” of physics and come up with
a new, unified theory of forces. The quest for a unified theory
is widely considered to be the one of the greatest unsolved
problems of our time. Astronomers are using LRIS to collect
detailed measurements of supernovae in order to help them understand
the properties of dark energy. Long-awaited upgrades to the
LRIS instrument at Keck Observatory will increase the efficiency
of this instrument fivefold and increase its imaging field
of view by 25%. Using a more powerful LRIS instrument, scientists
will continue to probe the far reaches of the universe in their
search to understand the nature of the forces which govern
our world. Read “Breathing New Life
into a Discovery Machine” to learn more.
Click here
to view a video clip of Alex Filippenko discussing the
significance of the proposed upgrades to LRIS. Video by Jim
Richards, producer/director for Educational Technology Services
at UC Berkeley.
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| Image: Illustration of the Keck I Telescope
by Kirk Caldwell for a May 24, 1987 Los Angeles Times
Magazine article, “Building the World’s Largest Telescope:
Mr. Keck’s Bequest.” |
It is difficult to imagine the pre-CNN, pre-Internet communication
network which existed in January 1985, when then-President
Reagan sent this telegram to administrators at the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech). We were a nation on the
brink of globalization, leading the world with unprecedented
technological innovation. The optimism that surrounded the
world’s largest philanthropic gift for a scientific project,
the $70 million grant by the W. M. Keck Foundation to Caltech
to construct the world’s largest telescope, was palpable. The
ten-meter Keck I Telescope was to be four times the size of
the then-largest telescope, the 200-inch telescope at Palomar
Observatory.
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| Photo: Presidential telegram sent to Caltech
in January, 1985, courtesy of Keck Observatory archives. |
Six years later, the Keck Foundation followed up with another
gift of roughly $59 million dollars to construct the Keck II
Telescope adjacent to Keck I at the summit of Mauna Kea. The
twin Keck telescopes have exceeded all expectations and fulfilled
the grand vision of the Keck Foundation. The answers to universal
questions about the origin and fate of the universe, and about
the existence of life and of habitable worlds beyond Earth,
are now within our grasp.
Read more about the Keck Foundation
grant, a well-calculated risk which kick started a new
era of scientific discovery on this planet.
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| Image: Measured from the ocean floor, Mauna
Kea is more than a half mile higher than Mount Everest,
at an altitude of 31,824 feet. Image copyright NGDC/GLCF/DLR,
from the book Mountains from Space, featuring
digital images of the world’s highest peaks compiled
from a variety of sources, including satellites and airborne
cameras. |
“We will never catch today’s global economic waves by developing
land. Instead we need to begin focusing on human development – the
kind of development that recognizes our future economic success
depends upon innovation and new ideas, of which there is an
unlimited supply.” - Governor Linda Lingle, 2006 Inaugural
Address, December 4, 2006
Land has been the basis of wealth in Hawai`i both historically
and in the present. Hawai`i’s land prices are among the highest
in the nation, but, like many of the resources that fuel our
modern economy, the amount of developable land is a limited
commodity. As home prices skyrocketed out of reach of most
wage earners in our State during the past five years, community
leaders realized the need to diversify our land-based economy
and generate wealth via new avenues. Hawai`i’s “innovation
sector” relies on new ideas to change the ways we create energy,
supply our food, manage our natural resources, and do business.
Innovation, or creating new ways to accomplish tasks, is the
key to transforming Hawai`i’s economy.
To stimulate the growth of the State’s high-technology economy,
Governor Lingle is seeking advice from experts. Lingle’s recently
established Hawai`i
Innovation Council is a 15-member advisory body which will
review strategies and make recommendations to help the State
increase its innovation “capacity” and better support technology
research, development, and product creation. Dr. Taft Armandroff,
Director of Keck Observatory, has been selected to sit on this
Council and share his considerable expertise in the field of
scientific innovation with the Governor and her advisors.
“Hawai`i’s astronomical research community is recognized
as the premier on the planet, and Keck Observatory is the leader
of that community. As the Director of W. M. Keck Observatory,
I am a passionate user and advocate of innovation’s key drivers:
science, mathematics, engineering, and creativity.” – Taft
Armandroff
Learn more about Hawai`i: The Learning
Island.
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“Time on the world’s biggest
telescope is heavily, heavily prized. I would rather be here
on this telescope than anything in the world. I don’t think
that there’s anything that anyone could suggest to me that
would make me not want to be here. Last month I actually
had an invitation to the White House which I turned down
because we had Keck time. This is just the most precious
instrument on the world today.” – Dr. Paul Butler,
astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington,
D.C., Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Click here to view
a video clip of Paul Butler, excerpted from the PBS documentary “What’s
Up in the Universe?”.
“What’s Up in the Universe?” is a fast-paced, 60-minute
documentary that traces the origins of our planet and of life
on our planet, and of astronomers’ epic search to find life
on other planets within our universe. “What's Up?” looks
at mankind’s urge to explore through the experiences of a variety
of discoverers, beginning with voyages by Polynesian navigator Nainoa
Thompson and including research conducted by some of the
world’s leading scientists at observatories in Hawai`i. The
film’s executive producer is Dr.
R. Brent Tully, an astronomer on the faculty at the Institute
for Astronomy at the University of Hawai`i. The film’s producer
and director is Susan
Friedman, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who is
currently a faculty member at the University of California
Santa Cruz.
Keck Observatory hosted a premiere screening of the documentary
on Tuesday, July 10, at Keck Headquarters in Waimea, Hawai`i. “The
film is fantastic!” says Debbie Goodwin of Keck Observatory’s
Advancement Office. The film received major funding from the
National Science Foundation and is being distributed nationally
to public television stations throughout the U. S. Click
here to purchase a copy of What’s Up in the Universe? Read
an interview with filmmakers Susan Friedman and Brent Tully.
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