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Space Archeology : Studying Early Universe Using Remote Radio Telescopes

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Space Archeology : Studying Early Universe Using Remote Radio Telescopes

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Come join us for our monthly Astronomy talk!

7:30pm-8pm: Social time with snacks
8pm: Talk begins

Topic: Space Archeology : Studying Early Universe Using Remote Radio Telescopes

Speaker: Akshatha Vydula, Ph.D.(Astrophysics) Candidate, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University

Abstract: In the evolution of the Universe, there remains a gap in understanding the formation of first stars and galaxies, ~300,000 years after the Big Bang. These early stars brought with them the first light in the Universe, thus leading to ‘Cosmic Dawn’. Although this is an event of the past, the spin-flip transition of an electron in the neutral hydrogen (called the 21 cm signal) remains a tracer of the early Universe. This talk is about how we use this tracer in radio astronomy to bridge the gap between formation and the present day Universe.

About the speaker:
Akshatha grew up in a small town in Karnataka, India, and got her undergraduate degree from RV college of Engineering in Bangalore. For her thesis, she worked with the largest radio interferometer in the Netherlands called LOFAR, with her research on 'Search for Galactic and high redshift absorption lines with LOFAR'. She then moved to Tempe Arizona, where she is currently completing Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the Low-Frequency Cosmology lab, School of Earth and Space Exploration. Her research falls in Radio Astronomy and Experimental Cosmology, specifically focusing on formation of the first stars and galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization and Cosmic Dawn. She is also affiliated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where her research is on measurement of Neutron lifetime using space-based Neutron spectrometers.

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