Sparkles, Space, and the Start of Time

We now know of thousands of planets around stars other than our sun, many of which are completely different to anything in our Solar System. The largest and hottest of the planets, so-called ‘hot Jupiters’, are so hot that their atmospheres are full of clouds made of gemstones like quartz, rubies, and sapphires. I will explain how we know about these worlds and how we continue to study them.

When we look at the first light of our universe, it is weirdly uniform — far more smooth than we expect if you rewind back to the Big Bang. A leading idea, called inflation, explains this by taking a look at the first fraction of a second of the Universe’s existence. The problem is we still haven’t proven it actually happened. So how do you test a theory about the universe when it was less than a trillionth of a second old? I’ll walk through what kind of evidence we’re looking for, and how the next-generation camera we’re building for the South Pole Telescope is designed to go after it.