Description:

Over the past several decades, the scientific pursuit of “precision cosmology” has led to the currently accepted paradigm of a universe that began in a dense, hot, nearly uniform state, and subsequently expanded and cooled through dynamics controlled by dark matter and dark energy.  Within this framework, however, there are still many unanswered questions.  One question is the process by which galaxies, stars, planets, and ultimately life emerged from the primordial soup.  Theoretical physicists are building models of the emergence of structure and, aided by today’s powerful computers, are making remarkably detailed predictions about this Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch or Reionization.  Experimental astrophysicists are building large radio telescopes that are sensitive enough to detect the characteristic 21cm radiation from neutral hydrogen at these early times.  This lecture will describe some of the first confrontations between the theories and the measurements, with a focus on results from the large radio telescope arrays.

Speaker: Jacqueline N Hewitt, Massachusetts Institute of Technology