Archive for Cosmology

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A Free Online Course in Cosmology from SISSA

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on November 25, 2021 by telescoper

The nice people at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (known to its friends as SISSA for short) have made available a free online course in cosmology. You can get all of it on Youtube.

The course comprises 16 professionally edited video-lectures delivered by lecturers of the SISSA Astrophysical and Cosmology and Astroparticle PhD Programs and some of their collaborators. I know some of the participants personally, including Paulo Salucci (who introduces the course though I haven’t met him in person for ages so it was nice to see him on camera.

Cosmology is a big subject, of course, and a short-ish course can’t cover everything so there is an emphasis on the research topics covered by SISSA scientists. I haven’t watched all the videos but those I have seen are pretty good. There are actually 17 videos in the playlist below but that includes a very short prelude to introduce the series. The others are between about 25 and 45 minutes in length so you probably don’t want to watch them all in one sitting!

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass – The Video!

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff, YouTube with tags , , , on November 15, 2021 by telescoper

As promised here is the video recording of the Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass we held by Zoom last Friday.

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That Was The Masterclass That Was

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on November 12, 2021 by telescoper

This morning we did the Astrophysics and Cosmology Masterclass advertised here. I think it went quite well. Apparently we had over sixty schools registered – at least one in every County – about a 1,000 schoolkids altogether. Certainly there were lots and lots of questions, which is a good sign!

Here is a screen grab of part of the event. I didn’t realize my camera was a bit wonky!

In case anyone is interested here are the slides I used for my part of the talk:

I’ll post a recording of the whole event when it becomes available. Here is the recording of the workshop:

I had to leave before the end to go to a vector calculus lecture that was interrupted by the arrival of the Power Rangers, but that’s a different story…

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 4, 2021 by telescoper

Regular readers of the blog – both of them – may remember that, after a couple of postponements due to Covid-19, we presented a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology in Maynooth on March 25th 2021. Well, owing to popular demand, we’ve decided to do a re-run of the event on Friday 12th November 2021 ahead of the forthcoming CAO cycle. That’s a week tomorrow!

This will be a half-day virtual event via Zoom. It’s meant for school students in their 5th or 6th year of the Irish system. There might be a few of them or their teachers who see this blog so I thought I’d share the news here. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

Here is the updated official poster and the programme:

I’ll be talking about cosmology early on, while John Regan will talk about black holes. After the coffee break one of our PhD students will talk about why they wanted to study astrophysics. Then I’ll say something about our degree programmes for those students who might be interested in studying astrophysics and/or cosmology as part of a science course. We’ll finish with questions either about the science or the study!

I’m told that with a week still to go we already have over 750 science students based in schools from An Daingean to Arranmore Island, from Monaghan to Mayo and many counties in-between. Fortunately it is online so no travelling is involved. Unfortunately the participants don’t get to see the wonderful campus so here’s a gratuitous picture!

(And at 12 noon I don’t turn into a pumpkin but do have to run off to give a lecture on vector calculus..)

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on October 20, 2021 by telescoper

Time to announce another publication in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This one is the 13th paper in Volume 4 (2021) and the 44th in all.

The latest publication is entitled  The LSST-DESC 3x2pt Tomography Optimization Challengeand is in the folder marked Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, and is especially relevant for cosmology. The paper is led by Joe Zuntz of the University of Edinburgh, and there are 27 authors altogether, scattered across the globe, representing the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

You can find the paper on the Open Journal of Astrophysics site here and can also read it directly on the arXiv here.

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Cosmology Talks: James Alvey on Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in 2021

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on October 15, 2021 by telescoper

It’s been a while since I last shared another one of those interesting cosmology talks on the Youtube channel curated by Shaun Hotchkiss. This channel features technical talks rather than popular expositions so it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but for those seriously interested in cosmology at a research level they should prove interesting. I found this one particular interesting as it is a field that I lost track of quite a long time ago and it was great to see what has been going on!

Here James Alvey gives a pedagofical overview of the general state of the field of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) in 2021, including the basic physics that goes into BBN calculations through each of the relevant epochs (neutrino decoupling, the deuterium bottleneck, etc). He gives particular emphasis to the recent LUNA measurements of the D + p →γ + 3He reaction (or deuterium + proton goes to photon and 3-Helium). This was previously the source of greatest uncertainty in predicting the final deuterium abundance of BBN. He ends by talking about the implications of the LUNA measurements on possible new physics beyond the standard model, in particular possible thermal relics.

There is a Nature paper about the LUNA results here and  two other papers on this topic by James can be found here and here.

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on September 28, 2021 by telescoper

Time to announce another publication in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This one is the eleventh paper in Volume 4 (2021) and the 42nd in all.

The latest publication is entitled Squeezing the Axion – it’s about inflationary scalar field perturbations using the squeezed state formalism – and is by

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

You can click on the image to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the arXiv version of the paper here. This one is also in the folder marked Cosmology and Non-Galactic Astrophysics.  

P.S. I hope to publish another paper tomorrow…

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth!

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on September 28, 2021 by telescoper

Regular readers of the blog – both of them – may remember that, after a couple of postponements due to Covid-19,  we presented a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology in Maynooth on March 25th 2021. Well, owing to popular demand we’ve decided to do a re-run of the event on Friday 12th November 2021 ahead of next year’s CAO cycle.

This will be a half-day virtual event via Zoom. It’s meant for school students in their 5th or 6th year of the Irish system. There might be a few of them or their teachers who see this blog so I thought I’d share the news here. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

Here is the updated official poster and the programme:

I’ll be talking about cosmology early on, while John Regan will talk about black holes. After the coffee break one of our PhD students will talk about why they wanted to study astrophysics. Then I’ll say something about our degree programmes for those students who might be interested in studying astrophysics and/or cosmology as part of a science course. We’ll finish with questions either about the science or the study!

(And at 12 noon I don’t turn into a pumpkin but do have to run off to give a lecture on vector calculus..)

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on September 23, 2021 by telescoper

Time to announce another publication in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. This one is the tenth paper in Volume 4 (2021) and the 41st in all. We actually published this one a couple of days ago but I’ve been so busy with start-of-term shenanigans that I didn’t get time to announce it until this morning.

The latest publication is entitled Consequences of constant elevation scans for instrumental systematics in Cosmic Microwave Background Experiments. The authors are Daniel B. Thomas & Nialh McCallum of Queen Mary, University of London, and Michael Brown of the University of Manchester.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

You can click on the image to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the arXiv version of the paper here. This one is also in the folder marked Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, though it is obviously of relevance to Cosmology and Non-Galactic Astrophysics too.

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R.I.P. Thanu Padmanabhan (1957-2021)

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , on September 17, 2021 by telescoper
Prof. Thanu Padmanabhan

It’s my sad task to pass on yet another piece of bad news. Renowned Indian physicist and cosmologist Professor Thanu Padmanabhan (known to all as “Paddy”) passed away suddenly this morning at the age of 64. I believe he suffered a heart attack at his home in Pune.

Paddy was not only a prolific researcher, with over 300 articles and many books to his name, but also a very gifted public speaker. Although we met and chatted a few times I never really got to know Paddy personally, but I shall remember him best for the many wonderful lectures I heard him give, at conferences and in seminars, the first being at Sussex when I was a graduate student there ay back in the 1980s.

The sudden death of such a highly esteemed colleague and friend has shocked his family and circle of friends, as well as the physics community in India, and is sure to have a similar effect around the world as news travels. Paddy travelled widely and had collaborators across the globe, including in the United Kingdom and United States.

All I can do here is to offer my sincere condolences to his family, friends, scientific colleagues who are grieving now, and for whom his loss will be irreparable.

Rest in peace, Thanu Padmanabhan (“Paddy”) (1957-2021).

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