Abstract:
    With a cosmic flight simulator, we'll take a scenic journey
through space and time. After exploring our local Galactic neighborhood,
we'll travel back 13.7 billion years to explore the Big Bang itself and how
 state-of-the art measurements and new theoretical insights are
transforming our understanding of our cosmic origin and ultimate fate.
 I then discuss how mapping neutral hydrogen at high redshifts has the potential
 to dramatically improve the precision of our cosmology, and shed new light
 on the nature of dark matter, dark energy and the early universe.

Introduction of Speaker:
      A native of Stockholm, Tegmark left Sweden in 1990 after receiving his B.Sc. in Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology (he'd earned a B.A. in Economics the previous year at the Stockholm School of Economics). He studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his M.A. in 1992, and Ph.D. in 1994 and accepted an appointment as a research associate with the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Munich. In 1996 he headed back to the U.S. as a Hubble Fellow and member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Tegmark remained in New Jersey for a few years until an opportunity arrived to experience the urban northeast with an Assistant Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received tenure in 2003. He arrived at MIT in September 2004. Tegmark has received numerous awards for his research, including a Packard Fellowship (2001-06), Cottrell Scholar Award (2002-07), and an NSF Career grant (2002-07). His work with the SDSS collaboration on galaxy clustering shared the first prize in Science magazine's "Breakthrough of the Year: 2003."