The story of our Universe has been unfolding for 13.7 billion years, but the pages of this story have only been accessible to us for the last 59 years.  On 9th October 2023, UCC’s Dr Mark Kennedy succeeded in getting through 13.7 billion years of history in 50 minutes (at a whooping pace of 274 million years per minute!) and fielded many questions afterwards. Fundamental to cosmology is that the Universe is not static, and we can only see the light from stars where enough time has passed for the light from them to reach us.  This leads to the observable Universe.  Cosmology focuses on understanding the nature from the entire Universe, based on observations of the observable Universe.

Mark didn’t shy away from showing us equations. This one for Einstein’s theory of General Relativity includes the cosmological constant (the middle term) once thought by Einstein to be his biggest mistake but reinstated when the universe was found to be expanding at an accelerating rate.  Did we understand the equation?  In truth, not quite, but it was fun anyway!

Dr Kennedy lectures in UCC’s School of Physics, and is working on the “Invisible Monsters” project, attempting to find the hidden population of black holes using machine learning and next generation all-sky surveys.

We look forward to welcoming him again.