Steve Benton "Report on SuperBIT's 2016 Test Flight" ABSTRACT | SuperBIT is a wide-field sub-arcsecond imaging telescope for visible and near UV/IR wavelengths. It is designed to operate in the space-like environment of the Super-Pressure Balloon platform at an altitude of 35 km. During a 100 day flight it will infer masses of hundreds of…

TITLE Cosmology with the Longest Lever Arm using CMB Lensing ABSTRACT The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a snapshot of the universe at a redshift of around 1100. At the same time, it acts as a backlight that is gravitationally lensed by structure that formed at low redshifts. CMB fluctuations are therefore especially sensitive to…

TITLE The interstellar B-fields crossing primordial CMB B-modes ABSTRACT Planck, as well as balloon and ground based experiments, have measured the polarization of the sky at sub-mm and mm wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity. The data analysis involves research in cosmology and Galactic astrophysics, which might lead to a major…

TITLE Measurements of the gravitational constant – why is a precise measurement so difficult? ABSTRACT In this presentation, I will summarize measurements of the Newtonian constant of gravitation, big G, that have been carried out in the last 30 years. I will describe key techniques that were used by researchers around the world to determine G…

TITLE Early-Universe Boot-camp Part III: The truth about bounces ABSTRACT This will be the third part of the early-universe boot-camp in which we will focus on cosmologies that replace a big bang with a big bounce. We will explain how, in these scenarios, the large-scale structure of the universe is determined during a contracting phase before…

TITLE Surrogate models of gravitational waveforms from numerical relativity simulations of black hole mergers ABSTRACT GW150914 was the first detection of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, bringing us into the era of gravitational wave astronomy. From such gravitational wave detections, we can put constraints on deviations…

Detecting B-modes due to inflationary gravitational waves in the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background is one of the greatest goals of modern observational cosmology. Many experiments have been designed to detect this weak signal, and upper limits are improving year by year. In fact, while B-modes have now been clearly observed,…

These two meetings will be a frank examination of current theories of the origin and evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe, especially aimed at experimentalists and observers, with ample time for questions and discussion.
 

These two meetings will be a frank examination of current theories of the origin and evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe, especially aimed at experimentalists and observers, with ample time for questions and discussion. The first meeting will focus primarily on big bang inflationary cosmology; the second will continue the…

Perhaps the most surprising result from the Planck satellite is the observation that the E-mode power in the dust polarization is twice that in the B mode, in stark contrast to pre-Planck expectations of roughly equal dust powers in E and B modes. I will show how the E- and B-mode powers are determined by fluctuations in the magnetized…

Abstract: "A space-based gravitational wave observatory targeting the milliHertz frequency band has the potential to inform many areas of physics and astrophysics including the nature of gravity in the strong-field limit, the formation and growth of massive black holes and their host galaxies, and the demographics of stellar compact objects…

Title: GW150914 and the next challenges in gravitational-wave observations Joint event with the "GR@100++" PCTS workshop. Note special time! For Gravity Group members who attend the seminar talk, there is a free lunch with the workshop participants, starting at Noon. The talk is open for everybody. If you’d like to attend the entire workshop,…

Gravity's universal coupling to particles and fields makes it our most robust probe of Nature. In the past century it has alerted us to both dark matter and dark energy and our precision gravitational gaze may still have surprises in store. I will review the Einstein-Boltzmann equations of cosmological perturbation theory with an emphasis on…

Do we have a Standard Model of Cosmology that explains all cosmological measurements with six well-specified parameter values? Having recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the CMB, I summarize what we have learned from the CMB (our most powerful cosmological tool) and from combining the CMB with other cosmological data…

TBA
*Note the special time*