Echoes from the Beginning: How Galaxies Encode the Early Universe

The first trillionths of a second after the Big Bang are amongst the most mysterious periods in the Universe’s history, yet the physics governing this era remains largely unknown. Our current best model for describing the cosmic expansion during this tiny fraction of a second is “inflation” - a brief, violent period that caused the fabric of space itself to stretch faster than the speed of light. In this talk, Prof. Philcox will discuss the evidence for inflation and show how it can turn tiny quantum fluctuations in the early Universe into the large-scale structure we see around us today. Currently, most of our knowledge about inflation comes from observations of light from the early Universe (the Cosmic Microwave Background). With the advent of modern telescope collaborations that produce three-dimensional maps of millions of galaxies across the Universe, this situation is starting to change. Prof. Philcox will demonstrate how we can synthesize theory, data, and computation to analyze these maps, allowing us to place unprecedented constraints on the early Universe and potentially uncover the physics of inflation.

Speaker: Oliver Philcox, Stanford University

Attend in person, or register to watch online (see weblink)