Does the Bi-modality of UV-Optical Colors of Normal Type Ia Supernovae change the Accelerating Universe?

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By combining ground-based optical and near-infrared data of type Ia supernovae with UV data from NASA's Swift satellite, the research team will check the intrinsic brightness of nearby supernovae after accounting for a newly discovered sub-grouping of type Ia supernovae. This information will be used to verify the distances to faraway galaxies and thus the amount of acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. This will test the amount of dark energy inferred by that acceleration. New observations of supernovae will be distributed to the public via a Twitter feed, and the PI will produce teaching modules for middle school and high school that include exciting concepts from this research.The key to this project is to revisit the methods employed to determine the line-of-sight dust extinction to each supernova and the absolute magnitude of each supernova, this time with an emphasis on near-UV versus optical region bi-modality. Techniques that avoid using colors to estimate extinction are emphasized as the fundamental finding is a color difference between the two groups. These findings will then contribute to a better theoretical understanding of supernova explosion physics.