What Every Physicist Should Know About Observational Cosmology

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Speaker(s): Jodi Christiansen (’85)

Over the past 20 years cosmology has been transformed from a largely theoretical pursuit to a high-precision science with ~1% uncertainties. The theoretical developments of the last century and the observations that led to the discovery of 95% of the “stuff” of our universe weave a fascinating tale that finally answers the fundamental question of how it all came to be the way it is from about a picosecond after the Big Bang until today. We now find ourselves at a point where the general features of the universe can be explained with physics principles familiar to undergraduates, including conservation of energy and thermodynamics. In this talk I will present the physics model of the expanding universe and explain how it connects to important cosmological observations of Type Ia Supernovae, the Cosmic Microwave Background and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations.

Colloquium

Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.