Summary:
After 6 years of painstaking observations, an international team has garnered evidence that dark energy may be changing with time. I shall outline how the Dark Energy Survey observations of about 1,500 supernovae have pinned down the density of dark energy with unprecedented precision, and also enabled a precise measurement of time dilation due to the expansion of the Universe. But what would be the implications of time-dependent dark energy for fundamental physics and the fate of the universe?
Program:
16:00 Welcome and brief intro (CYCL01)
16:15 - 17:15 IRMP Colloquium talk by Prof. Tamar Davis (CYCL01)
17:15 - 17:30 Questions and discussion (CYCL01)
17:30 - ... Snacks and drinks with the speaker (Cyclofette)
19:00 Speaker Dinner, probably Trattoria or La Brasserie RN Louvain-la-Neuve
Registration:
No registration is needed to attend the talk, but please register here for the Snacks&Drinks and here for the Speaker Dinner.
About the speaker:
Tamara Davis is a highly decorated professor of astrophysics at the University of Queensland. She currently leads the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) and is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav). She is an avid communicator of science and occasional guest host of astrophysics documentaries, including the episode “Black Hole Hunters” which won the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award. Amongst her many accolades she received an Order of Australia for "significant service to astrophysical science, to education, and to young astronomers
How to get there:
The event takes place in lecture hall CYCL01 in the Marc de Hemptinne, Chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve. You can simply follow this Google Maps link.
Marco Drewes