Accomplishments of the Cosmology and Gravity Program

• Using satellites, high-altitude balloons and other instruments, CIFAR researchers have been involved in a variety of experiments to create new knowledge about tiny fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation left in the Universe by the Big Bang. These new measurements have helped refine the picture of what the Universe was like only 400,000 years after the Big Bang. In particular, the results have solidified our understanding of how and why the Universe expanded after its explosive birth.
• CIFAR researchers are major contributors to the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. The survey observes large patches of sky to detect the location of distant supernovae (exploding stars), which helps determine the expansion history of the Universe, and to map the distribution of mass in the Universe. Several CIFAR contributors are experts in weak gravitational lensing – an approach that measures how light from distant galaxies is distorted by the gravitational pull of intervening massive structures (such as galaxy clusters), making it possible to map the location of otherwise undetectable dark matter.
• Understanding the beginnings of the Universe is a challenge that may be met through string theory, which involves extra dimensions beyond the one time and three space dimensions that we know. Several CIFAR researchers champion the string theory landscape, in which the Universe we see is only a bit of a much larger whole. They are working to connect the tiny quantum world and the larger macroscopic world into a Theory of Everything by replacing particles with miniscule vibrating strings. Since the days of Albert Einstein, The Theory of Everything - one set of laws that describe the behaviour of everything from the smallest object in the universe to the largest - has been the ultimate goal of all cosmological research.