[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Colloquium Seminar today at 14:00

[postmaster@admin.triumf.ca]

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Date/Time: Fri 2006-04-07 at 14:00

Location:  Auditorium          

Speaker:   Mark Halpern (UBC)

Title:     WMAP 3 year results: Beginning to constrain inflation

Abstract: The first year results from WMAP, based on temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background, determined several features of our universe which had been known only roughly; its age is 13.7 billion years; 73% of the energy density is dark energy; space is nearly flat. With three years of data we now have much smaller uncertainties and useful measurements of microwave polarization which is the key to our ability to constrain cosmological models precisely. I will review the experiment and show that our results are consistent with a broad range of astronomical and nuclear abundance data.  The simplest model of structure formation, the Harrison-Zeldovich model, predicts a flat initial power spectrum, which is to say equal variance on all scales, while inflation predicts a small departure from a flat spectrum. The WMAP data, for the first time, provide a measurement precise enough to show a preference for inflation instead of a flat spectrum.  This eagerly anticipated test is the `smoking gun' of inflation.





Stimulants available 15 minutes before the talk.

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Subscription information available at http://admin.triumf.ca/netdata/seminars/list


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