The James Webb Space Telescope: Shedding light on Dark Matter and Dark Energy

With the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), cosmologists now have a power tool in their hands to look deeper into the mysteries of our Universe than ever before. In this lecture, Dr. Birrer will lay out outstanding questions in cosmology and describe how JWST is uniquely positioned to advance our current understanding of dark matter and dark energy. Specifically, he will discuss how JWST will probe dark matter based on its impact on galaxy formation and from the observed gravitational lensing effect caused by this mysterious matter component. Dr. Birrer will also highlight key programs that utilize JWST to measure the Hubble constant, a parameter to characterize the expansion of the Universe. He will close the talk by previewing some early results from JWST, which the scientific community and the general public are eagerly awaiting.

Speaker: Simon Birrer, Stanford University

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