ECE 600 Seminar

New Technologies for Observational Cosmology

Prof. Peter Timbie

UW Department of Physics

Date, Time, and Place: Monday, Oct. 6, 2008 from 3:45-4:45 pm in 1106 ME.

Abstract:

The field of cosmology has recently shifted from a "data starved" to a "data rich" science. Improvements in sensor technology are responsible. Precision measurements of microwave radiation from Big Bang have provided images of the infant universe, 13.7 billion years ago. These images are consistent with inflation, a model in which the universe expanded by 26 orders of magnitude in the first 10-36 seconds. The expansion slowed to a much more leisurely rate until a few billion years ago. Now, contrary to all expectation, the expansion is accelerating again. Future measurements of the radio emission from neutral hydrogen atoms promise to explain the nature of the mysterious "dark energy" which is supposed to be driving the new expansion. Both types of measurements depend upon new sensors of electromagnetic radiation. I will describe how superconducting transition-edge sensors (TES) under development in my lab will be used to observe relic gravitational waves from inflation. Similarly, I will describe a novel radio interferometer which will use ultra low-noise transistor amplifiers and an array of giant cylindrical reflectors to search for dark energy.

Bio:

Peter Timbie is a professor in the Department of Physics at UW Madison. He specializes in developing new techniques for observations of the early universe, particularly using radio waves, microwaves, and millimeter waves. Before coming to Madison in 1997, he taught physics at Brown University. He received his BA at Harvard in 1979 and his PhD at Princeton in 1985. From 1985-1985 we was a Mellon Fellow at the MIT Center for Science, Technology and Society, and from 1987-1990 was a post-doc at UC Berkeley.

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