Physics

Dr. Shadab Alam
University of Edinburgh, UK

Current paradigm in modern cosmology is the pursuit to understand the hidden mystery behind the words ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’. As we all have heard, great problems require great tools and tremendous resources. The current state of the art data driven era of cosmology is the result of series of growing galaxy surveys in the recent past  (SDSS, 6dF, 2dF, VIPERS,GAMA, CFHTLS etc.), which are ongoing (SDSS-IV, KIDS, HSC, DES) and those planned in the future (DESI, EUCLID, LSST, WFIRST). These surveys have provided progressively better data in terms of both quantity and quality. In this discussion, the speaker will focus on the surveys which measure the redshift of galaxies, called galaxy redshift survey. He will summarize how galaxy redshift surveys, like BOSS and eBOSS, are performed and what is going to happen in the next generation redshift surveys like DESI. Then he will move on to showing some of the recent results using data from BOSS, focusing on the aspects he most worry about. We will also learn how the galaxies dance with each other producing beautiful patterns and helps us test General Relativity on cosmological scales.