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BBC's Cosmic Dawn Features Avi Loeb

BBC's Cosmic Dawn Features Avi Loeb

The Big Bang was not the moment of creation. The real moment of creation came 100 million years later. The cosmic dawn: The moment the first stars were born.

The moment that lit up the universe.

Stars began forging the ingredients that made planets like Earth. It was the starting point that led to the appearance of life.

Astronomers are now trying to witness and understand this moment of creation.

BBC Horizon tells the scientific version of the story of Genesis in a new episode featuring CfA's Avi Loeb and other leading researchers.

Trailer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0320kx0

Full episode:
https://www.animmex.com/video/9029/bbc-cosmic-dawn-the-real-moment-of-creation

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Projects

AbacusSummit

Theoretical Astrophysics, Institute for Theory and Computation

AbacusSummit is the world’s largest suite of high-performance cosmological N-body simulations, developed to meet and exceed the analysis requirements of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. These simulations allow one to predict the large-scale structure that results from a wide range of cosmological models, enabling detailed investigations of theories of cosmological structure formation and comparison to the coming decade of observational surveys.

AstroAI

Atomic and Molecular Physics, High Energy Astrophysics, Optical and Infrared Astronomy, Radio and Geoastronomy, Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences, Theoretical Astrophysics, Harvard University Department of Astronomy, Science Education Department, Central Engineering, Director's Office, Chandra X-ray Center, Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics, Institute for Theory and Computation

AstroAI is a institute dedicated to the development of artificial intelligence to enable next generation astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Learn More

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)

Optical and Infrared Astronomy

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) consortium is conducting a five-year survey to map the large-scale structure of the Universe over one-third of the sky and 11 billion years of cosmic history, aiming to study the physics of dark energy.

GMACS

Optical and Infrared Astronomy, Central Engineering

GMACS - Moderate Dispersion Optical Spectrograph for the Giant Magellan Telescope is a powerful optical spectrograph that will unlock the power of the Giant Magellan Telescope for research ranging from the formation of stars and planets to cosmology.

For Scientists

Physics of the Primordial Universe

Harvard University Department of Astronomy, Institute for Theory and Computation

The Big Bang theory of cosmology successfully describes the 13.7 billion years of evolutionary history of our Universe. However, it is known that the current Big Bang theory cannot self-consistently explain its initial conditions. We are interested in finding out what caused the Big Bang, and the physics involved in this primordial epoch. We study physics, build models and propose observables for the primordial universe using quantum field theory, general relativity and/or string theory, and test them with data from astrophysical observations.