NOTE THE UNUSUAL PLACE!! -- build. 61 lecture hall (DESY Hamburg)
NOTE THE UNUSUAL PLACE!! -- build. 61 lecture hall
DESY Hamburg
Description
In this talk I will first review the current observational status of inflation, a phase of very rapid accelerated expansion of our universe that happened a split second after the big bang. Then I argue that it is very important to study theoretical models of inflation in the context of a UV complete theory of quantum gravity like string theory. To conclude the first part of the talk I discuss two theoretical models of inflation that are currently being tested by experiments and that will be either confirmed or excluded in the next few years.
Our universe today is again in a phase of accelerated expansion that is driven by a mysterious dark energy that counteracts the force of gravity. This dark energy behaves like a cosmological constant that however is incredibly small which poses a huge theoretical challenge. I will discuss a potential explanation to this cosmological constant problem which is due to an anthropic argument by Steven Weinberg.
