An Introduction to Dark Energy Science and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

Note: *Refreshments are served in the SCI Lounge at 3:00PM.*
Speaker: Chris Walter, Duke University

When: December 10, 2019 (Tue), 03:30PM to 04:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 109
View the poster for this event.

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

In this talk I will introduce the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project, a giant survey telescope that will be located in Chile and is designed to make a three dimensional survey of the entire visible sky. Using the LSST over ten years, the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration will examine billions of galaxies, hundreds of thousands of supernovae and several other probes to try to determine the nature of the mysterious “Dark Energy” which is unaccountably causing the universe to be pushed apart at a faster and faster rate. The LSST will open a whole new field of observational cosmology by collecting an unprecedented amount of data and addressing some of the most fundamental questions we have about space-time including the nature of gravity, dark energy, and dark matter. This data will be available to the public and looked at by science collaborations formed to extract science from the instrument. In this presentation I will introduce the science, the instrument, and some of the techniques we will use to try to elucidate the nature of dark energy.