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!

Hi all,

I am a PhD student focusing in cosmology. I wanted to up the science content here on Tildes, and I thought that one way to do so is to have an informal little Q&A session. As such, feel free to use this post to ask any questions you might have about cosmology specifically, and physics in general.

This may not be as exciting as some other science AMAs given that I am a rather early graduate student, so there may be a lot of questions I don't know the answer to. However, I'm willing to try my best and answer over the next few days, and to let you know I don't know if I don't!

A bit about myself: I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago where I studied physics and mathematics, and then I was a student researcher in a computational cosmology group at a national lab. I subsequently enrolled at UC Davis to continue studying cosmology. Ask me anything about physics, cosmology, or high performance computing!

I also invite anyone else with expertise to chime in as well!