November 8, 2024 8-10 PM

Event Type: Lecture and Stargazing
Title: Mapping the Universe in Blurred Lines
Lecturer: Delaney Dunne
Position: PhD Candidate
Institution: Caltech
Abstract:
Astronomers have many reasons for wanting to map the universe — we want to understand its history, to study how galaxies formed and evolved, and to explain strange forces such as dark matter and dark energy. Typically in order to do this, we observe large surveys of many individual galaxies, but it's almost impossible to see the faintest galaxies with these surveys. There is an emerging technique for mapping the universe that makes it possible to see all galaxies: intentionally making the maps blurry! I'll discuss this new technique, known as Line Intensity Mapping, and describe an ongoing experiment called COMAP, which uses this technique to map out the universe at the most active period in its history.