CSIRO podcast with one of the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize winners July 23, 2007
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, Education.trackback
The prestigious 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize was awarded last week to the two teams responsible for discovering that the Universe is accelerating. Published in 1998 the findings of both teams overthrew the conventional view and provided firm observational evidence for the need for dark energy.
One of the teams, the High-z Supernova Search Team was led by Brian Schmidt from the Australian National University whilst the other, the Supernova Cosmology Project was led by Saul Perlmutter from the University of California Berkeley. Warrick Couch, now at Swinburne University in Melbourne and Brian Boyle, now Director of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility were both members of Perlmutter’s team.
Professor Brian Boyle explains in this 6-minute podcast what the teams were attempting to measure and how their findings challenged the models of the time. The podcast provides a wonderful, concise example of science in action.
Another member of the SCP team, Carl Pennypacker from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in his quest to detect more supernovae for the project established the Hands-On Universe scheme:
HOU is an educational program that enables students to investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math, and technology. Using the Internet, HOU participants around the world request observations from an automated telescope, download images from a large image archive, and analyze them with the aid of user-friendly image processing software.
It is an innovative and engaging scheme that allows students to experience scientific investigation using effective tools. Students can tackle open-ended projects and make their own discoveries. I’ll come back to this concept of student investigations much more in the future.
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