The European Physical Society has honored the teams behind NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope with a prestigious award. The telescope, developed by researchers at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has provided significant insights into high-energy cosmic phenomena since its launch in 2008.
Fermi’s two main instruments, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor and the Large Area Telescope (LAT), have enabled discoveries such as locating hundreds of pulsars and identifying mysterious “Fermi bubbles” at the center of our galaxy. These findings have been pivotal in understanding gamma-ray sources like supermassive black holes and neutron stars.
On July 7, the European Physical Society awarded the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize to the international scientific teams involved in the Fermi mission for their contributions to gamma-ray astronomy. Peter Michelson, principal investigator of the Fermi LAT project and professor at Stanford, highlighted how Fermi’s observations offer a unique perspective on cosmic phenomena that cannot be observed through optical telescopes.
Michelson explained that gamma rays provide a window into high-energy events in the universe. He noted that before Fermi’s launch, only six pulsars emitting high-energy radiation were known; now over 300 have been detected. The telescope also played a crucial role in confirming that neutron star collisions are a major source of heavy elements like gold.
International collaboration has been essential to Fermi’s success. The project involves partners from multiple countries, bringing diverse expertise to design and build instruments capable of detecting gamma rays across the universe.
“Once it was launched, sometimes we needed to use radio observations to see pulsars or optical instruments to measure the spectrum of a source,” Michelson said. “There’s a whole network of telescopes and observers around the world that collaborate – which has paid off enormously.”
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