Discovery of the most distant supernovae and the quest for {Omega}

• Main Authors: Goldhaber, G., Perlmutter, S., Gabi, S., Goobar, A., Kim, A., Kim, M., Pain, R., Pennypacker, C., Small, I., Boyle, B.
• Other Authors: United States. Department of Energy., National Science Foundation (U.S.), Swedish National Science Research Council (Sweden), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 75 - Paris (France)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 1994
• Subjects: Cosmological Models; Supernovae; Universe; Cosmology; Expansion; Density; 66 Physics; Arctic
• Online Access: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc679689/

A search for cosmological supernovae has discovered a number of a type Ia supernovae. In particular, one at z = 0.458 is the most distant supernovae yet observed. There is strong evidence from measurements of nearby type Ia supernovae that they can be considered as {open_quotes}standard candles{close_quotes}. The authors plan to use these supernovae to measure the deceleration in the general expansion of the universe. The aim of their experiment is to try and observe and measure about 30 such distant supernovae in order to obtain a measurement of the deceleration parameter q{sub o} which is related to {Omega}. Here {Omega} is the ratio of the density of the universe to the critical density, and they expect a measurement with an accuracy of about 30%.