Ok ok disclaimer, I am a cosmology PhD candidate, don’t have the degree yet. However I do feel comfortable at this point calling myself a cosmologist (I think for the first time ever). In any case, with all the new people here, I think an AMA might be fun. I will try my best to answer all of the questions I get asked, but it may not happen quickly!

A bit about my research. I study the conditions in the early universe, specifically when the cosmic microwave background was forming, and I use CMB data to test our understanding of this era. The CMB formed roughly 300,000 years after the big bang, when the universe was 1/1000th its current size. The patterns that we see in the temperature fluctuations of the CMB can tell us a lot about the universe at this early time, and specifically we can try to use them to see if anything ‘unexpected’ happened at this time, like a hitherto undiscovered particle annihilating into ‘normal’ particles (for example).

Ask me anything about the early universe, or physics writ large, and I will do my best to answer!