Brian Gerke ’99- University of California, Berkeley
“Nearly Normal Galaxies in a Preposterous Universe”
Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929, the study of cosmology has led to many unexpected, perpelexing and fascinating results. Eighty years later, we are on the verge of explaining the origin and formation of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. In this talk, I will give a semi-historical introduction to the basics of cosmological physics, with an emphasis on the formation of large-scale structure in the universe. I will then discuss the latest results from a survey of very distant galaxies that is now revealing the history of galaxy evolution over the last seven billion years.