Astronomy Seminar Series
Jo Dunkley, Princeton University
There is currently a tension between various measurements of the expansion rate of the universe. I will give a recap of this issue, and talk about how we use the Cosmic Microwave Background, our most distant observation, to infer the local expansion rate of space. I will explain what assumptions we make about the cosmological model in doing so, and how we might modify this model to bring different measurements of the expansion rate better in line. I will talk about new measurements we are making in Chile to improve estimates of the Hubble constant derived from the CMB, using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, and the upcoming Simons Observatory.
Prof. Dunkley is a Professor of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. Her research is in cosmology, studying the origins and evolution of the Universe. Her major projects are the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Observatory. She is also a member of Hyper Suprime-Cam and LSST's Dark Energy Science Collaboration. She has been awarded the Maxwell Medal, the Fowler Prize and the Rosalind Franklin award for her work on the Cosmic Microwave Background, and shared the Gruber Prize and the Breakthrough Prize with the WMAP team.