The Standard Cosmological Model: From the Big Bang to Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Abstract:What do we know of the Universe and how did we get there? In this talk I take us on a tour of cosmology, from the various beliefs in history that have captured our imagination, to the modern era where models are proved or disproved by scientific observation. It was only in the last century that better science has given us standard models – widely-accepted descriptions of reality that are substantiated by a concordance of observational data. I plan to explain chronologically the major observational discoveries in the last century that have shaped our theories of the Universe, specifically the standard model of the Big Bang. In addition I will talk about the incorporation of dark matter, dark energy and inflation theory into our general picture, forming a possible new standard model called the Lambda CDM Model.