A new paradigm for cosmology in the 21st Century | Mark Brodwin | TEDxUMKC

My goal for this talk is to describe the revolution that occurred in our understanding of the Universe at the turn of the century. For 70 years – from 1929 to 1999 – our understanding of the expanding Universe was influenced by our everyday experience of gravity here on Earth and in the solar system. However, nature is far more mysterious and interesting than we had imagined. The discovery of the accelerating Universe, the biggest revolution in cosmology since the 1929 discovery of its expansion, would await development of the theoretical and observational tools audacious enough to measure it. Understanding the nebulous Dark Energy responsible for this acceleration is the most important and fundamental question in 21st century physics and cosmology. Mark Brodwin uses the largest telescopes on Earth and in space to discover and study rare, distant galaxy clusters to understand the underlying physics that drives the growth of the most massive galaxies and the evolution of the Universe. After discovering his interest during undergrad at McGill, he immersed himself in astrophysics and cosmology during his PhD at the University of Toronto. During postdoctoral fellowships at JPL/Caltech, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, his research focused on the infrared discovery and study of distant galaxy clusters. He leads some of the most successful galaxy cluster surveys to date, including the IRAC Shallow and Distant Cluster Surveys and the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey. He is also a NASA member of the European Space Agency project that is building the Euclid telescope for launch in 2020, to measure dark energy, general relativity, and sample galaxy clusters. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx