Emerging from the Darkness

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 13th June 2024 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Meeting Room

The emergence of the first stars and galaxies, lighting up the dark Universe remains a mystery that modern extragalactic astronomers are trying to solve. Previous ground and space-based telescopes made exceptional advances in the field, shifting the Cosmic Dawn up to 400 million years after the Big Bang. However, in the previous couple of years, the James Webb Space Telescope has made some outstanding discoveries, pushing this frontier up to just 250 million years after the Big Bang.
This has enabled astronomers to begin to understand their properties, and how these galaxies kick-start a process that radically changed the composition of the Universe. From the first light in the Universe to the detection of the first black holes and an excess of chaotically merging galaxies, in this talk, I will discuss some of the latest results regarding the very first galaxies to exist in the Universe.

Join the meeting online HERE if you can't attend in person

Speaker: Callum Witten

Dr. Callum Witten is a distinguished astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge. Earning his PhD in Astronomy in 2021 from the same institute, Dr. Witten's research delves into the earliest epochs of the universe. His work focuses on the formation and evolution of the first galaxies, the reionization of the universe, and the study of Lyman-alpha emitters. He is also an expert in protoclusters, early galaxy formation, and the dynamics of galaxy mergers.
Dr. Witten's contributions to understanding these fundamental aspects of cosmology are pivotal in unravelling the mysteries of our cosmic origins.