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2Physics Quote:
"Many of the molecules found by ROSINA DFMS in the coma of comet 67P are compatible with the idea that comets delivered key molecules for prebiotic chemistry throughout the solar system and in particular to the early Earth increasing drastically the concentration of life-related chemicals by impact on a closed water body. The fact that glycine was most probably formed on dust grains in the presolar stage also makes these molecules somehow universal, which means that what happened in the solar system could probably happen elsewhere in the Universe."
-- Kathrin Altwegg and the ROSINA Team

(Read Full Article: "Glycine, an Amino Acid and Other Prebiotic Molecules in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko"
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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Distortions in Large Scale Structures of Galaxies Shed New Light On Dark Energy

Large Scale Structures of galaxies [Image courtesy: European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO)]

An international team of 51 scientists from 24 institutions took the challenge of performing the measurement of the distribution and motions of thousands of galaxies in the distant Universe using ESO's Very Large Telescope in order to better understand what drives the acceleration of the cosmic expansion. In a recent paper in 'Nature', they report their results which shed new light on the mysterious dark energy that is thought to permeate the Universe.

Ten years ago, astronomers made the stunning discovery that the Universe is expanding at a faster pace today than it did in the past. "Explaining why the expansion of the Universe is currently accelerating is certainly the most fascinating question in modern cosmology," says Luigi Guzzo, lead author of the 'Nature' paper, "We have been able to show that large surveys that measure the positions and velocities of distant galaxies provide us with a new powerful way to solve this mystery."

"The expansion implies that one of two very different possibilities must hold true," explains Enzo Branchini, member of the team, "Either the Universe is filled with a mysterious dark energy which produces a repulsive force that fights the gravitational brake from all the matter present in the Universe, or, our current theory of gravitation is not correct and needs to be modified, for example by adding extra dimensions to space."

Current observations of the expansion rate of the Universe cannot distinguish between these two options. But this international team based their clever technique on a well-known phenomenon, namely the fact that the apparent motion of distant galaxies results from two effects: the global expansion of the Universe that pushes the galaxies away from each other and the gravitational attraction of matter present in the galaxies' neighbourhood that pulls them together, creating the cosmic web of large-scale structures.

"By measuring the apparent velocities of large samples of galaxies over the last thirty years, astronomers have been able to reconstruct a three-dimensional map of the distribution of galaxies over large volumes of the Universe. This map revealed large-scale structures such as clusters of galaxies and filamentary superclusters," says Olivier Le Fèvre, member of the team, "But the measured velocities also contain information about the local motions of galaxies; these introduce small but significant distortions in the reconstructed maps of the Universe. We have shown that measuring this distortion at different epochs of the Universe's history is a way to test the nature of dark energy."

Guzzo and his collaborators have been able to measure this effect by using the VIMOS spectrograph on Melipal, one of the four 8.2-m telescopes that is part of ESO's VLT. As part of the VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS), spectra of several thousands of galaxies in a 4-square-degree field (or 20 times the size of the full Moon) at epochs corresponding to about half the current age of the Universe (about 7 billion years ago) were obtained and analysed. This is the largest field ever covered homogeneously by means of spectroscopy to this depth. The team has now collected more than 13,000 spectra in this field and the total volume sampled by the survey is more than 25 million cubic light-years.

The astronomers compared their result with that of the 2dFGRS survey that probed the local Universe, i.e. measures the distortion at the present time. Within current uncertainties, the measurement of this effect provides an independent indication of the need for an unknown extra energy ingredient in the 'cosmic soup', supporting the simplest form of dark energy, the so-called cosmological constant, introduced originally by Albert Einstein. The large uncertainties do not yet exclude the other scenarios, though.

"We have also shown that by extending our measurements over volumes about ten times larger than the VVDS, this technique should be able to tell us whether cosmic acceleration originates from a dark energy component of exotic origin or requires a modification of the laws of gravity," explains Guzzo.

Reference
"A test of the nature of cosmic acceleration using galaxy redshift distortions",
L. Guzzo, M. Pierleoni, B. Meneux, E. Branchini, O. Le Fèvre, C. Marinoni, B. Garilli, J. Blaizot, G. De Lucia, A. Pollo, H. J. McCracken, D. Bottini, V. Le Brun, D. Maccagni, J. P. Picat, R. Scaramella, M. Scodeggio, L. Tresse, G. Vettolani, A. Zanichelli, C. Adami, S. Arnouts, S. Bardelli, M. Bolzonella, A. Bongiorno, A. Cappi, S. Charlot, P. Ciliegi, T. Contini, O. Cucciati, S. de la Torre, K. Dolag, S. Foucaud, P. Franzetti, I. Gavignaud, O. Ilbert, A. Iovino, F. Lamareille, B. Marano, A. Mazure, P. Memeo, R. Merighi, L. Moscardini, S. Paltani, R. Pellò, E. Perez-Montero, L. Pozzetti, M. Radovich, D. Vergani, G. Zamorani & E. Zucca,
Nature 451, 541-544 (31 January 2008), Abstract Link

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