The annual Board of Visitors Great Lecture is Astronomy will be presented
by Dr. Eiichiro Komatsu next Saturday, February 7 at 1 p.m.

The free lecture will be at the Applied Computational Engineering and Sciences
(ACES) Building in the Avaya Auditorium (ACES 2.302 - located on the corner
of 24th St. and Speedway). Dr. Komatsu will be giving the lecture titled,
"Frontiers in Cosmology." (See abstract below.)

There may be parking spaces near the ACES building, but please read
the signs carefully to avoid getting a parking ticket. There is pay parking
available at the Speedway and San Jacinto parking garages:
http://www.utexas.edu/parking/parking/visitor/

Hope some of you can make it!
Lara



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"Frontiers in Cosmology"

Over the last 10 years, our understanding of the Universe has advanced
tremendously thanks to powerful theory and observations. We now know
how old our Universe is, and how much matter and energy there is in the
Universe, quite accurately.

However, the more we learn about the Universe, the more challenges we
seem to face: recent observations clearly indicate that we do not
understand 95 percent of energy/matter in the Universe today!

How about the history of the Universe? How much do we know about the
Universe when it was very young — perhaps as young as a tiny fraction of
a second old? Powerful development in theory and observations of
cosmology has finally made it possible to peer into the epoch before the
Big Bang — the period called Cosmic Inflation. How can we possibly “see”
such an early epoch?

It is often said that we are living in the Golden Age of Cosmology, but
at the same time we are living in an
extraordinarily challenging moment for Cosmology. What is the nature of
Dark Matter and Dark Energy? What powered the Big Bang? In this lecture
I will review the outstanding questions and recent developments —
Frontiers in Cosmology.