Ismaili Centre: The Universe’s Baby Picture: An Evening with Professor David Spergel
Observations of the microwave background, the left-over heat from the big bang, are snapshots of the universe only three hundred thousand years after the big bang. These observations have answered many of the questions that have driven cosmology for the past few decades: How old is the universe? What is its size and shape? What is the composition of the universe? How do galaxies emerge? By going to some of the most forbidding places on the planet (such as the Atacama Desert and the South Pole) and by launching satellites beyond the orbit of the moon, we have made significant progress on these questions. While we have learned much, many key cosmological questions remain unanswered: what happened during the first moments of the big bang? What is the dark energy? What were the properties of the first stars? Dr. Spergel will discuss how future observations may start to answer these new and deeper questions.
About Dr. Spergel
David Spergel is the Charles A. Young Professor of Astronomy on the Class of 1897 Foundation and was until 2016, the Chair of the astrophysical sciences department at Princeton University. He is best known for his work on the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) mission, which measured detailed structure in the residual energy from the Big Bang, which in turn have provided us with critical insights into the birth and the large-scale geometry of cosmic spacetime, as well as about the minuscule ripples in this spacetime that seeded the observed structure (e.g. galaxies) in the universe. He has been recognized with numerous fellowships and awards including the MacArthur Fellowship (2001) -- popularly known as the Genius Grant, the Shaw Prize (2010), the Gruber Prize (2012, as a member of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe team), and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (2015). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he currently serves as chair of the National Academy of Sciences Space Studies Board. Most recently, Dr. Spergel was named the Founding Director of the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute.
Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Registration: Online
Organized by: The Ismaili Centre, Toronto
Location: Ismaili Centre Social Hall, 49 Wynford Dr, Toronto, ON M3C 1K1