Refining Cosmology
The World Science Festival’s annual salon series offers in-depth conversations with leading scientists, extending the discussion of the Festival’s premiere public programs to graduate students, postdocs, faculty and well-informed members of the general public. This salon will look at how a sophisticated network of telescopes deployed in some of the most remote locations on Earth, from the South Pole to the Atacama desert, are providing ever more refined data to understand how the universe was created and how it will eventually evolve.
This program is part of “The Big, the Small, and the Complex,” a series made possible with support from the Kavli Prize.
Moderator
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Lawrence M. Krauss
Internationally known theoretical physicist and best-selling author Lawrence Krauss has focused his research on the intersection of cosmology and elementary particle physics. Dr. Krauss’s work addresses questions about the origin of matter in the universe. More »
Participants
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John E. Carlstrom
Cosmologist John Carlstrom studies the origin and evolution of the universe from the very bottom of the Earth. His quest to make detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation—the 14-billion-year-old light from the Big Bang—has driven him to work at the coldest and driest desert on the planet, the high Antarctic plateau, where he is currently leading the 10-meter South Pole Telescope project at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station. More » -
Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud
Astrophysicist Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud is an experimental astrophysicist who uses measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang, to understand the origin, composition, and evolution of the universe. She has been a member of the EBEX experimental team since 2005, and she is currently overseeing the work of the Columbia team as they prepare to deploy the EBEX instrument to Antarctica later this year. More » -
John Kovac
Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Physics Dr. Kovac is an Assistant Professor in the Astronomy and Physics Departments at Harvard University. His cosmology research focuses on observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to reveal signatures of the physics that drove the birth of the universe, the creation of its structure, and its present-day expansion. More » -
Suzanne Staggs
Physicist Suzanne Staggs is an experimental physicist who uses cutting-edge detectors and optical technology to measure the cosmic microwave background, the low-level radiation left over from the very first moments of the universe. More »
