McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Physical Society Colloquium

Interview for Faculty Position

Probing the opposite ends of time with the Cosmic Background Radiation

Matt Dobbs

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The next generation of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations will unlock a wealth of information about the composition, origin, and fate of the universe. I'll describe a series of bold new experiments which will make use of recent instrumentation advances to precisely measure the CMB polarization and the Sunyaev Zeldovich effect.

With these observations, we'll gain insight into the origins of the universe using the CMB polarization, which may encode information transmitted by gravity waves from an inflationary era at the earliest instants of space-time. The Sunyaev Zeldovich effect allows us to catalog distant galaxy clusters, providing a measure of the scale evolution of the universe - and hence its fate. Together these observations have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the universe in which we live.

Tuesday, February 3rd, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)