The team will use the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to inventory the cold gas in the universe. Recent technical upgrades to this NSF facility paved the way for this important inventory. The team will study how galaxies form stars in the cold gas. They will also test models for how galaxies change as they age. Senior team members will train junior team members. Undergraduates from underrepresented groups will be involved in the research. The team will engage with underserved youth in counties near Ithaca, New York. Podcasts will be developed to disseminate the research to the public.
The team will use the VLA's superb sensitivity and wavelength coverage to investigate the volume density of molecular gas in the universe. Their goals are to (1) conduct the first census of the cold gas history of the universe; (2) determine what drives the evolution of the volume density of cosmic star formation; and (3) compare the data to models for galaxy evolution.
