Physics Program Presents
Believing We're Seeing the Big Bang*
(*or, a time shortly thereafter)
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Hegeman 107
A lecture by Kathryn Schaffer, ’98, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago
Not long after the Big Bang (in cosmic time), the universe went through a transition from being filled with hot, glowing, opaque plasma to being a dark and transparent nursery for the formation of stars and galaxies. An afterglow of light from that early plasma epoch still lingers, giving us a glimpse of a very different universe more than thirteen billion years ago. Observations of this microwave-wavelength light (called the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB) have enabled profound insights into cosmic structure and history and helped to establish the current standard cosmological model. In recent years, some of the most important CMB discoveries have been made by ground-based telescopes, including the South Pole Telescope. Studying the CMB from the ground is exceptionally difficult because the earth's atmosphere glows in microwaves — ten million times brighter than the faint signals we hope to discern from deep space. In this talk I will describe some clever observing and data analysis tricks we use to disentangle CMB signal from atmospheric noise, and reveal what goes on behind the scenes to turn raw and messy South Pole Telescope data into something we "believe" — compelling new evidence to test and refine cosmological models.
For more information, call 845-758-7302, or e-mail [email protected].
Location: Hegeman 107