The Accelerating Universe and You: The Past, Present, and Future of Exploring the Universe With Supernovae

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Speaker(s): Michael Wood-Vasey (’98)

The field of cosmology has been revolutionized in the last decade by the discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. This remarkable conclusion was first derived by using Type Iasupernovae as standardizable cosmological candles. Since this initial work, a number of complementary cosmological measurements have led to our current concordance” cosmological model that states that 70% of the Universe is made up of a “dark energy” that is currentlypushing the Universe apart. I will present recent efforts in thefield of SN Ia cosmology, including those of the ESSENCE project , that have begun to home in on thenature of this mysterious dark energy. Pontifications on the future of precision cosmology will follow.”

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.