ESP Biography

This will be a broad and general introduction to big bang cosmology. We will discuss the Big Bang and the evolution of the universe since then. We will then discuss current exciting research efforts to study the early universe including using microwave telescopes to image the Cosmic Microwave Background. This class will be focused on the experimental efforts to study the early universe

Last year, LIGO made a groundbreaking discovery - the gravitational wave signal from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of two black holes in a binary system. We will explore the science of how this discovery was made and discuss what we can learn about our universe by detecting gravitational signals. We will also discuss future experiments in gravitational wave astronomy and play around with some real data from LIGO.

How many cells are in the human body? How big would we be if the Earth were the size of a bowling ball? How much trash do we generate yearly? What if we could estimate the answers to questions like these without lots of complicated math and background knowledge? It turns out, we can! Come learn about the art and power of "guesstimation" and order-of-magnitude estimates - and see how it can transform your physical understanding and problem-solving confidence!