Chaire George Lemaître 2018

Europe/Brussels
CYCL01 (Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve))

CYCL01

Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve)

Bâtiment de Hemptinne, Chemin du Cyclotron 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Christophe Ringeval (CP3)
Description

Inaugural lecture by Prof. Roberto Trotta (Imperial College London)

 

 

    • 16:15 17:15
      If You Don't need (Astro)Statistics, You Have Done the Wrong Experiment 1h CYCL01

      CYCL01

      Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve)

      Bâtiment de Hemptinne, Chemin du Cyclotron 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve

      At the beginning of last century, the physicist and Nobel Prize Winner Ernest Rutherford
      reportedly believed that "If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a
      better experiment". If he were alive today, he probably would not recognize the way
      cosmology (the study of the Universe on its largest scale) has developed: essentially all of
      the exciting discoveries in the last two decades have relied on sophisticated statistical
      analyses of very large and complex datasets. Today, advanced astrostatistical methods
      belong to the toolbox of almost every cosmologist.

      In this talk I will give an overview of how cosmologists have established a "cosmological
      concordance model" that explains extraordinarily well very accurate observations ranging
      from the relic radiation from the Big Bang to the distribution of galaxies in the sky in the
      modern Universe. The emerging picture of a cosmos remains puzzling: 95% of the Universe
      is constituted of unknown components, dark matter and dark energy. Our understanding of
      the Universe is -- already today -- limited by our statistical and computational methods. I will
      discuss how astrostatistics will meet the challenges posed by upcoming extremely large data
      sets and thereby be instrumental in answering some of the most fundamental questions
      about the physical reality of the cosmos.

      Speaker: Prof. Roberto Trotta (Imperial College London)
    • 17:45 18:45
      Reception and drinks 1h Cafeteria

      Cafeteria

      Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve)