Dark Energy

As a recent Sun article ("Astronomers fret over Webb Telescope's future," Oct. 2) pointed out, I enthusiastically support the scientific mission of the James Webb Space Telescope. As chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA, I'm also a fiscal watchdog who insists on value for every taxpayer dollar. I was the first to call for an independent review that found the Webb telescope was technically sound but poorly managed and budgeted.

Description: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a supernova that exploded more than 10 billion years ago, the most distant of its kind ever spotted. It was 4 percent farther away and 350 million years older than the previous record-holder, a supernova found three months ago by a team at the U.S. Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Researchers: David O. Jones of the Johns Hopkins University was the lead author on a paper detailing the discovery.

Astronomers unveiled yesterday the most detailed picture ever made of the infant universe, a snapshot that solves some of mankind's oldest riddles - from when the first stars began to shine to how the universe will end. The eerie image, compiled by a NASA space probe in a lonely orbit on the dark side of the moon, shows the universe as it was just 380,000 years after the big bang got everything started. "This picture is worth more than a thousand words," said David Spergel, a Princeton University astrophysicist who is part of an international team that announced the results yesterday in a news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington.

With time running out for the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers in Baltimore and around the world are gearing up for the biggest research project ever mounted on the orbiting observatory. Later this year, astronomers from dozens of institutions will begin gathering images of more than 250,000 of the most distant galaxies in the universe. They will seek answers to some of astronomy's biggest questions - queries that go to the origins of the universe itself. There is a sense of urgency to the effort.

Use clean energies to solve shortfall The Sun's editorial "Re- regulating power" (Dec. 3) rightly pointed to the shortfall in electricity supplies we could face if we don't take action now. But it will be a disappointment if decision-makers respond in the same way they often have to such a shortage - by building major transmission lines to faraway power plants. Thankfully, there is a better way to get energy, through conservation, renewable energy and small, local power plants. The potential shortfall of 1,500 megawatts of power can be met with clean energy.

Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson Joseph Henry Press / 264 pages / $27.95 "Not another book about the Big Bang!" I hear you say. Well, yes, in a way, but there's much to recommend Brave New Universe. In the first place, there is (depending on how close your ear is to the ground) a lot of new news about the universe; in the second, this book makes an excellent primer. The authors, Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson, are both physics professors but not the kind who don't care whether the public understands them or not. They're blessedly lucid.

ROCKET SCIENTIST Michael D. Griffin's return to NASA, this time as its top administrator, seems assured. But that's the last guaranteed win the current head of the space department at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab can count on for a while. Mr. Griffin, with an armful of academic degrees and decades of management, flight and space program experience, is a great choice for the country's top space post. He will need all his skills to steer the research and exploration agency through its current mission shakeup.

Baltimore astronomer Adam Riess, the lead author on the 1998 paper that first reported that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, will share in the $500,000 Peter Gruber Cosmology Prize for 2007. The unrestricted cash award and gold medal are given annually to scientists for "theoretical, analytical, or conceptual discoveries leading to fundamental advances in the field," according to the foundation's Web site, where the selection was made public yesterday.

With the price of gas and electricity through the roof, everyone's talking about alternative energy sources. When you're out in the field or camping with the family and the battery on your cell phone or GPS unit dies or your kids' MP3 player goes dark, alternative energy is the only way to go. Solar Style, a Baltimore-based company, is making a variety of gizmos that turn sunlight into power. Each of the solar charging units fits in the palm of your hand and most come with an array of adapters for cell phones and other devices.

GREENBELT - In about two weeks, some 24,000 pounds of what may be the most thoroughly-tested and closely-inspected hardware on earth will be packed into custom crates, mounted on flatbed trucks and shipped as "wide load" cargo to Cape Canaveral, Fla. When it arrives, the one-of-a kind camera and spectrograph, now being stored at the Goddard Space Flight Center, will be inspected once more, loaded on to the space shuttle Atlantis and launched into orbit...