First light: Revealing the Early Universe - Chris Lintott

The final lecture in the series returns to the theme of how insight is derived from observations, considering the cosmic microwave background.

This oldest light in the Universe, emitted just 400,000 years after the Big Bang, contains the seeds of the structures we see around us, and tells us about conditions at the Universe's beginning.

It will also consider how measurements of the Universe's expansion, made using the CMB, are leading to unexpected results, creating tension in modern cosmology.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:48 Why we only see the cosmos in the past
06:58 Why JWST is an infrared telescope
10:16 Vesto Slipher's discovery that distant galaxies are redshifted
13:39 How Hubble's redshift work led to him discovering Hubble's law
18:21 How the Big Bang Theory developed
24:47 Project Echo
26:04 Telstar
26:44 Penzias and Wilson's discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR)
32:45 Why does the universe have CMBR?
35:56 How the discovery of CMBR proved the Big Bang Theory
41:00 Why we can't explain the current expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble tension)
44:05 How new observations in Chile may solve this problem
46:25 Conclusion
48:03 Q&A Session

This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on 29th May 2024 at Conway Hall, London

Chris is Gresham Professor of Astronomy.

He is also a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/f...

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