Exploring the Big Bang with the Cosmic Microwave Background
Affiliation(s): UQ
Session details: Saturday, 2012-04-07 05:30:00, TBA
Abstract
The oldest light in the Universe is the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang itself, the Cosmic Microwave Background. The universe was dense and opaque before the CMB was emitted, so we cannot directly see what went on. By studying the anisotropies, the hot and cold spots distributed across the CMB sky, we can infer the initial conditions and processes that gave rise to the universe as we see it today, and test models such as Cosmological Inflation. Satellite experiments such as COBE, WMAP and the Planck Surveyor have mapped the CMB, and so continue to give us an ever more detailed picture about what went on during the Big Bang.
Biography
David is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Astrophysics Group at the University of Queensland in Australia. He works in the areas of Cosmology and Early Universe physics and is currently working as part of the WiggleZ Dark Energy survey collaboration.