The Inaugural lecture by Professor Joseph Silk as the new Gresham Professor of Astronomy covers the fiery moments after the creation of the Big Bang: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-primordial-fireball
The universe underwent an inflationary period of expansion. From an extremely hot beginning, it cooled down then reheated to form the expanding universe that we observe today. The relic radiation generated the fossil glow of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a testament to its fiery origin. Microwave telescopes map out the structure of the universe long before the galaxies were present, only 370,000 years after Big Bang. The current challenges in cosmic microwave background astronomy will be described.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-primordial-fireball
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,800 lectures free to access or download from the website.
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