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Dark energy and the expansion of the Universe
Dr Sownak Bose
(Associate Professor & UKRI Future Leaders Fellow)
Over a century ago, there was the groundbreaking realisation that the Universe is expanding. At the turn of the millennium, another astounding discovery was made: that this expansion is accelerating, powered by a so-called "dark energy", whose origin continues to perplex astronomers. The story has become even more baffling with new measurements made in the past year - and they may even upend the existing cosmological paradigm completely. I will discuss the history of dark energy, how we measure the growth of the Universe, and what our latest findings imply for the eventual fate of our cosmos.

Small spectrographs and large telescopes
Dr Rob Harris
(Assistant Professor)
Hi, I’m Rob! My research work takes the photonic technologies that bring broadband to your home and tries to integrate them into the largest telescopes in the world. In this talk I’ll tell you about my trip to the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona with a mini spectrograph I’d built. The spectrograph sits on the back of a telescope and splits light into its component wavelengths or colours, allowing us to fingerprint elements and molecules in space. Using the spectrograph, we prepared the way for a new instrument for the telescope, found new stars and helped constrain searches for black holes. Overall not too shabby for a quick May trip to Arizona.














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Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
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From Cloud to Code: The Physics of Modern Tech
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Beyond the Crystal Ball: The Science of Matter
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Green Lane, Durham, County Durham, DH1 3JU, United Kingdom