Abstract
Why is the Universe the way that it is? Why is it expanding? Why is that expansion growing ever faster? On the boundless scales of the cosmos the most formidable of nature's forces is gravity. Einstein predicted that there isn't actually a force of gravity at all, but rather spacetime is curved. His ideas lie at the heart of our understanding of modern cosmology and the Universe’s chronology. This same theory predicts black holes and gravitational waves, which have now been discovered in spectacular fashion. Examining the history of our expanding Universe we are led by the same theory inevitably to some kind of Big Bang — but does it predict dark energy driving an ever-accelerating Universe, gradually diluting everything into nothing at all? Perhaps. In this talk Chris Clarkson will describe our current understanding of the Universe at large and how future cosmological surveys will map the vast cosmic web of galaxies on scales so far only envisaged in prodigious computer simulations. Unravelling this delicate web will reveal not only the nature of the Big Bang itself, but the essence of dark energy — and with it, the future of the Universe.
Speaker bio
Professor Chris Clarkson is a cosmologist working at Queen Mary University of London. He works mainly on the theory of large scale structure of the Universe but has worked on many aspects of gravity and cosmology, including the Big Bang, gravitational waves and black holes. He is currently Head of the Astronomy Unit at QMUL, having previously worked at the University of Cape Town as Head of the Cosmology Group. He studied for his PhD in Glasgow a long time ago, and undertook postdocs in Canada, South Africa and in the UK.