Mapping the Cosmos, 4 September 6:30pm

Presented by Dr Cullan Howlet, University of Queensland

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in our ability to use 4m class telescopes to measure the positions and motions of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. In this talk, I will discuss three of the latest and greatest of these telescopes situated in the USA, Australia and Chile.

As I’ll show, these promise to map over 40 million galaxies in the coming years, and will provide incredible new knowledge of our own place within the wider Universe, and how the hidden mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy have dominated its evolution.

Bio:

Dr Cullan Howlett is a Senior Research Fellow in Cosmology in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland. His research involves mapping the positions and motions of millions of galaxies in our Universe to uncover how it has evolved since the Big Bang using leading-edge statistical and computational techniques.

Using these maps, alongside other probes such as the Cosmic Microwave Background and gravitational waves, he is exploring the big questions about how the Universe came to be the way it is today, and what will happen to it in the future.