Cosmology, Astronomy, and the Oldest Light in the Universe (Interview with Dr. Renée Hlozek, Princeton University)

The Mixcloud embed isn’t working at the moment, so you can find the audio here. (WordPress is a fickle, but free, beast.)

This was a weird thing for me to do – interview a cosmologist – because I’m a cosmologist. I tried to ask her questions to get her to explain what we do and why we do it. For your perusal, this is part 1 of out interview:

Extra links:

• Dr. Renée’s Hlozek’s website.
• The Death of the Universe animated TED special (I highly recommend).

• Doppler effect demonstration:

http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/content/view/embedjw/437383

• .Astronomy conference
  • Distance measurements in astronomy:
    • Some general stuff
    • Type 1a supernovae standard candles, specifically
  • Excellent NASA article on dark matter and dark energy
  • Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), standard Big Bang Picture
    • The most recent satellite, Planck, and the CMB
  • Polarization of light, polarization of the CMB
    • Intermediate level explanation (Wayne Hu, U. of Chicago)

^^ Polarization of the CMB from the BICEP2 results last year (primarily due to the CMB light filtering through dust in our galaxy before it reaches out telescopes).

• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope:

• SPIDER experiment