ABSTRACT

In less than a century we have advanced from knowing almost nothing about the Universe as a whole to measuring it with exquisite precision. In this process, the cosmic microwave background has played a dominant role. Why is the CMB so important, and what have we learned from the new measurements of it by the Planck spacecraft, launched in 2009?

About the Speaker:

Charles Lawrence, Fellow and Senior Research Scientist at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory, received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1983, and has been at Caltech and JPL ever since. His research has focused on studies of extragalactic radio sources, strong gravitational lensing, and especially the cosmic microwave background. He is the US Project Scientist for Planck, the third-generation space mission to measure the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background, which launched in May 2009.