How Radio Telescopes Reveal the Cosmic Dawn

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📡 What if the noise on your car radio held clues to the birth of the first stars? We spend a lot of time marveling at the visible universe through optical telescopes, but there is an entire hidden sky waiting to be discovered through radio waves. In this lecture, Dr. Akshatha Vydula, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Richmond, explores how faint emissions from neutral hydrogen gas let scientists peer back to the Cosmic Dawn, the earliest era when the first stars and galaxies formed. Akshatha will explain how an astonishingly small signal, just a fraction of a percent of the static in an ordinary radio, can help constrain the age of the universe itself. She works across some of the most remote radio observatories on Earth, including the EDGES telescope in Western Australia and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and contributes to LuSEE-Night, a Berkeley-led lunar lander launching soon to observe the sky from the far side of the Moon. From car radios to lunar missions, this talk traces how radio astronomy is transforming our understanding of cosmic origins. 🌌 *Accessibility & Seating Information We work hard to keep our lectures as accessible as possible while safely accommodating as many attendees as we can. Each of our venues is different. This venue has approximately 25% standing room. If you need a guaranteed seat, please plan to arrive early or email us at hello@bigbrainlectures.com so we can make special accommodations for you. 🕰 Event Details…