December 6, 2016
FEATURED FACULTY
SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Robert J. Thornton
Department of Physics
Dr. Thornton and Collaborators Receive NSF Grant
At an altitude of 17,000 ft. in the Chilean Andes, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) is one of the highest ground-based telescopes in the world. Dr. Thornton is currently on sabbatical to help design and build a new millimeter-wavelength camera, called Advanced ACT (AdvACT), for the telescope. This new instrument will unite cutting-edge polarization-sensitive detectors developed under NASA funding with the existing telescope to provide a combination of resolution, sensitivity, frequency and sky coverage unmatched by any current or planned instruments. AdvACT will answer questions about the origins of the universe, the properties of its massive contents, the formation of structures under the influence of gravity, and the nature of dark energy.
Read his Article in Physical Review Letters
Dr. Thornton has co-authored a study that has been published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. Titled "Detection of the Power Spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope" the article addresses the question of "Which theory best describes the beginning of the universe?"