September 20, 2012 Colloquia

On Thursday September 20, 2012 the astronomy department had an exciting and engaging Colloquium. Wendy Freedman, presented data on two projects she participated in. The first was the CSP and the second the CHP. 

Wendy Freedman has been a frequent guest speaker at the University of Michigan she comes on average once every three years.  Freedman graduated from the University of Toronto in 1984 with her Ph.D. She now works at Carnegie and in 2009 she won the Gruber Cosmology Prize.

She spoke on her and her colleagues work on the Carnegie Supernova and Hubble Constant Project (hints the CSP and CHP). She focused mostly on the current cosmological model, dark energy, Hubble's Constant (Ho) and the Carnegie Supernova project.

She gave detailed information about the Friedman equation and the cosmological framework (Einstein's tension vs. energy momentum tension)

Freedman showed that the current concordance model states that Ho = 72 + or - 5 km/sec/Mpc, but according to her and her colleagues work at Carnegie the newly estimated value of Ho = 73.8 + or - 2.4 km/sec/Mpc. 

This is a huge break through and she is going to study further into it with the CSP-I which began in 2011 and will run for seven years in total according to her. So be on the look out for updated values of Ho and keep up to date on how the CSP project is progressing.