Abstract: Trodden

Prof. Mark Trodden – Syracuse University

“Modern Cosmology and the Building Blocks of the Universe”

Let’s face it; the universe is really, really big! If we want to understand it, we need to know about the physics on very large scales. On the other hand, I think we’d all agree that atoms and their constituents are really, really small! To understand them requires us to know about physics on very small scales. The challenge of modern cosmology is to use these seemingly different aspects of physics to explain how a young, hot, small universe became the old, cold, huge universe we see today: to understand the physics of the Big Bang. In the first part of this colloquium, I will guide you through the major ideas of 20th century cosmology, highlighting some important unresolved questions along the way. In the second part, I will try to give a picture of how particle cosmologists are trying to address these questions: Why does the universe look the way it does today, why is the universe relatively flat and smooth, and what do quantum mechanics, superstrings and the cosmological constant have to do with all of this?