hi all,
Many thanks to Paul Nugent of the Institute of Physics in Ireland for notice of the talk below which takes place on Thursday, May 29th at 7:30pm in Trinity College Dublin. Tickets can be booked via the EventBrite link in the lecture notice @
www.maths.tcd.ie/research/2014/iqf/
"The Cosmic Microwave Background: New Views of the Early Universe"
Créidhe O'Sullivan (NUI Maynooth)
This is an exciting time for cosmology. Our understanding of the Universe has been transformed in the last 15 years and we now believe that while it contains only 5% ordinary matter, almost two-thirds of the Universe is made of a mysterious "dark energy".
The cosmic microwave background (CMB), relic radiation from the Big Bang, has been one of our most important sources of information about the early Universe and many believe that we have, for the first time, detected the signature of the gravitational waves produced by an early rapid inflation of the Universe.
In this presentation I will talk about the origin and importance of the CMB and describe some of the recent results from satellite and ground-based experiments such as Planck and BICEP2.
7:30pm, Thursday May 29th, JM Synge Lecture Theatre, Arts Block, Trinity College Dublin 
  