The Dynamical Universe: Evolution of the Cosmic Structure

Recent decades have brought significant insights about the Universe we live in.  Now we know to a great accuracy what is the geometry of the universe and its content.  Yet, this knowledge has opened some of the biggest mysteries in today's physical sciences: what is dark matter, what is dark energy, and why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?  Why did the universe come to be this way?  The standard model of particle physics appears as a great success, the standard cosmological model as well, but the two seem to be at odds.  In this talk I will review the current state of cosmology, and then turn to the large-scale structure of the Universe, and what it can tell us in the future with new sky surveys coming online.  Modeling this cosmic structure is exciting research, done on the largest supercomputers, and confronting those models against observations is the key in understanding what is dark energy as well as assessing our understanding of gravity.

Speaker: Dr. Zarija Lukic, Lawrence Berkeley Lab