Thursday 31 January 2008

Dark Universe at CERN

This week Rocky Kolb gave a series of lectures on cosmology. Those who ever attended Rocky's lectures know very well that they are difficult to bear -- you're in the constant danger of laughing your head off. Still you may learn a lot while gasping for air between laughing fits.

Rocky gave a review of the Lambda-CDM model at a non-specialist level. The first lecture is an overview of modern cosmology. The second is about inflation. The third is about the observational evidences for dark matter. The last one is about dark energy and recent actions of Dark Energy Task Force.

The lectures are especially recommended for those unfamiliar with recent developments in cosmology. If you know it all, you might still learn
- why Big Bang is more than just a theory,
- what can be done with duct tape and WD-40,
- why neutrinos may threaten your university,
and more.

Video and slides from all the lectures are available here. Enjoy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Second video has a bizarre empty quarter of an hour appended to it; third video does not seem to exist; fourth video is only a few seconds long. Of course, third and fourth would be the really interesting ones, about dark matter and dark energy... :(

Jester said...

Thanks for pointing this out. These problems with video seem to repeat themselves too often. In future, i'll try to check the files myself before linking to them.

Anonymous said...

"third video does not seem to exist; fourth video is only a few seconds long. Of course, third and fourth would be the really interesting ones, about dark matter and dark energy..."

Perhpas somebody is trying to say dark matter does not exists, and there is not much dark energy... :-)

Anonymous said...

Went back and checked, videos three and four are viewable now.