Registration is required for this free, virtual lecture: https://bit.ly/LunarTalk
LuSEE-Night is a joint project between NASA and Department of Energy to land a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon by late 2025. The long-term scientific program is to study the Dark Ages, the cosmic era between the last scattering of the cosmic microwave background and the time when the first stars and galaxies formed. Only cold, non-luminous hydrogen gas existed during this epoch, and so it has been largely unexplored and remains one of the least constrained frontiers of modern cosmology. Very low frequency radio observations (below 50MHz) are impossible from the Earth due to man-made and natural radio interference in addition to ionosphere which absorbs and refracts low-frequency radio waves. The far side of the Moon is believed to be the best place to do such observation in the entire solar system: Moon has not atmosphere and during the lunar night it is shielded from both Earth and the Sun. However, to date nobody has been successful at operating a radio telescope there. Dr. Slosar will explain the immense technical challenges and the scientific promise of being successful.
Dr. Anže Slosar is a cosmologist and physicist known for his work in observational cosmology, particularly using data from the Cosmic Microwave Background, galaxy clustering, and the Lyman-alpha forest to study the universe's structure and evolution. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2003 and held research positions in Ljubljana, Oxford, and Berkeley before joining Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2009, where he leads the Cosmology & Astrophysics Group. Dr. Slosar is currently the Science Lead for LuSEE-Night, a radio telescope project heading to the far side of the Moon, and is involved with the upcoming Rubin Observatory LSST. He received the DOE Early Career Award in 2011 and was named one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” in 2012.
