Jan 13, 2007 12:00 CST
Mar 30, 2007 12:00 CST

KICP South Pole Telescope project collaborates with the Exploratorium to bring Live Web-Casts from the South Pole about the historic deployment of the 10 meter South Pole Telescope.
Watch live on the web, in the studio audience at the Exploratorium or the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. View the Web archive at anytime. Visit the SPT website to: see pictures of Antarctica, the telescope and the team; learn about the telescope and how it will be used to explore the universe.

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KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom

Website

Since its discovery 40 years ago, the fossil radiation from the Big Bang has been used unlock the secrets of the universe: how it came to look like it does today and what it is made of. As the measurements have gotten better, the picture has become clearer but not necessarily more understandable. Some of what we have learned is surprising and may be pointing to the fact that there is much yet to be learned (e.g., new physics). We will discuss the nuts and bolts of how cosmology measurements are made, what they tell us about the universe, and where this may be leading us.
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KICP Members: Stephan S. Meyer

Website

At the 2007 NSTA Conference in St. Louis, members of the University of Chicago KICP outreach community presented workshops on physics and astronomy education and the public presentation of astronomical information.
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KICP Members: Randall H. Landsberg
KICP Students: Robert Friedman; Sarah M. Hansen

Website

For many years after its discovery, CP Violation appeared to be a phenomenon isolated from the rest of physics. The first goal was to see if tCP violation was due to a "superweak" interaction in neutral kaon mixing ("indirect" CP violation) or if there were a "direct" effect which would be manifest in the kaon decays themselves. For years, it seemed to be an interaction of the former kind, one that might not have any additional manifestations. A few years after the discovery, Sakharov realized that CP Violation in the very early Universe, in particular direct CP Violation, could lead to the matter-antimatter imbalance. A key development was the Kobayashi-Maskawa model which provided a framework in which to think about the problem, connecting it to quark mixing. This motivated a series of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation experiments to isolate the predicted direct effect. This talk will review how the problem was addressed in 3 Fermilab- based experiments spanning a 20 year period which culminated in a definitive detection of the effect by KTeV. The motivation and technical approaches to isolate this tiny effect with good control of systematic uncertainty will be reviewed together with the results and future prospects.
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KICP Members: Bruce D. Winstein

Join us for a slideshow by Professor John Carlstrom, S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics and the College, about the telescope his team recently built at the South Pole. His research involves looking for clues in the cosmic microwave background that will unravel the mysteries of the nature and origin of dark energy.
To learn more visit The South Pole Telescope website.

Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom
Scientific projects: South Pole Telescope (SPT)

South Pole Telescope project collaborates with the Exploratorium to bring Live Web-Casts from the South Pole.

Dec 21, 2007: Join us as we talk with scientists working on the South Pole Telescope. In today's program, we'll learn about the various projects and teams of people on the project, how they work together, and how they analyze the data they receive.

Jan 18, 2008: In our final talk with the South Pole Telescope staff, we'll learn about data collection. We'll focus on the receiver, a very precise instrument that is a sensitive, state-of-the-art data collector with a thousand "eyes" pointed to the distant universe. We'll also meet the scientists who will be wintering over at the South Pole for eight cold, dark months.

Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom
Scientific projects: South Pole Telescope (SPT)

Come and hear how scientists at the South Pole are making maps of the ancient Universe 80 billion light years across. These enormous maps are of incredibly cold light that once was too hot to handle, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is a faint radio hiss left over from a time when the entire Universe was hotter than the sun. Carefully mapping this now cold glow gives us a baby picture of the universe that reveals both its history and fate.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Clement L. Pryke
Scientific projects: QUaD