Physical Society Colloquium
Interview for Faculty Position
The First Billion Years:
Finding and Studying Galaxies in the Early Universe
Daniel Stern
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA
Recent years have witnessed outstanding progress in studying the earliest
phases of galaxy formation. The most distant galaxies identified are seen at
a time when the Universe was less than 900 million years old; the most
distant quasars known are only slightly closer. These observations provide
fundamental insight into the process of galaxy formation, as well as probe
the conditions of the early Universe. In particular, the most distant quasars
show the long-anticipated Gunn-Peterson effect, indicating that they are
radiating at a time when the Universe was neutral, before the first collapsed
structures had time to re-ionize the intergalactic medium. I am an
observational astrophysicist/cosmologist, and I will discuss my research in
this field, highlighting several projects which rely upon NASA's Great
Observatories (Hubble, Chandra, and SIRTF).
Monday, January 27th 2003, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)
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