Understanding the Universe Through Images of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Saturday, February 16, 2013: 1:30 PM-4:30 PM
Room 208 (Hynes Convention Center)
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) images of the sky provide a view of the universe when it was at its infancy, a mere few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. A variety of subtle modifications in the CMB maps provide clues to the formation of structure in the middle-age universe and capture acceleration dominated by dark energy in the present-day universe. This symposium will summarize some of the key scientific goals of CMB images and will move on to discuss the final results from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and some of the new results from the European Space Agency's Planck mission. The symposium will also summarize key scientific goals and new results from ground-based CMB observatories, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope. The fifth talk of the symposium will connect all-sky, space-based CMB images with ground-based high-resolution imaging of the CMB to outline the host of scientific questions addressed by CMB studies. The final talk is aimed at highlighting the technology developments in the field, including developments that are necessary over the rest of this decade for a successful initiation of the next satellite mission, aimed primarily at high sensitive observations of the polarization of the CMB radiation field.
Organizer:
Asantha Cooray, University of California
Discussant:
John C. Mather, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Speakers:
Marc Kamionkowski, Johns Hopkins University
Theoretical Overview of Cosmic Microwave Background Studies
Mark Devlin, University of Pennsylvania
Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Status and Results
John Carlstrom, University of Chicago
The South Pole Telescope: Status and New Results
James Bock, California Institute of Technology
Technology Developments and Applications in the CMB Studies
Bruce Partridge, Haverford College
Results from the Planck Mission
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