Astronomers announced last February a surprising double discovery: the first detection of radio waves from the time of the formation of the first stars in the universe, and a major clue about dark matter, the shadowy cosmic building block. In this talk we will introduce dark matter, which makes up most of the matter in the universe but remains largely mysterious. We will also discuss the formation of the first stars, a milestone in cosmic history that is now being explored for the first time. Further observations will soon demonstrate if we can indeed study dark matter by detecting radio waves from the early universe.

BIO
Prof. Rennan Barkana received his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1997. He was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study for three years followed by a year at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. Since 2001 he has been a faculty member at Tel Aviv University, where he is now a full professor and head of the Department of Astrophysics. Barkana has been a Moore Distinguished Scholar at Caltech, a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford, and a Guggenheim Fellow.