About the event

Our Ogden at 20 symposium took place on the 30 November 2022. Professor Karen O’Brien, Vice-Chancellor and Warden, welcomed our guests, followed by an introduction by Professor Paula Chadwick FRAS, Head of Physics. The Symposium opened with a keynote speech from Jim Peebles, Emeritus Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University, who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. In the short videos above, some of our speakers offer insights into different aspects of the five questions and how the Ogden Centre’s discoveries so far provide a platform for future generations to continue the quest to understand how our Universe was formed.

Order of speakers and what they planned to discuss: 

Thoughts on how we arrived at the five questions

Professor Jim Peebles 

"I propose to start with some general comments about what we do in natural science, illustrate them by examples of the progress in arriving at the standard model of cosmology, the ΛCDM theory, and argue why our inability to answer the Five Questions does not shake our confidence in ΛCDM as a remarkably good approximation to the real world."

Jim Peebles is Emeritus Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University. He is one of the world's leading cosmologists, responsible for major advances on several topics at the heart of modern physics. During a career spanning six decades, he made theoretical predictions for the properties of the heat left over from the Big Bang (the “cosmic microwave background” radiation), the origin of the chemical elements, the origin and evolution of galaxies and the cosmic large-scale structure, many subsequently corroborated by astronomical observations. He has published over 400 scientific articles and three books. As a Canadian, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982 and he has received virtually all major prizes and awards available to cosmologists and astronomers. Peebles was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.'' 

What is the dark matter, how much is there and where is it?

Professor Carlos Frenk 

"The dark matter makes up about 25 percent of the content of the Universe. It is the dominant form of matter (ordinary matter accounts for only about 5 percent) and so it sources most of the gravitational force in the Universe. It almost certainly consists of particles, collectively known as “cold dark matter'', created a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, although the particles have yet to be discovered in the laboratory. As the dominant form of matter, it is responsible for the formation of galaxies and other cosmic structures. I will review the empirical evidence for the existence of this dark component, its role in the formation of cosmic structure and the prospects for detecting or producing dark matter in the laboratory. Finally, I will present recent results on the possibility of conclusively testing the cold dark matter theory through astrophysical observations."

Carlos Frenk is Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics, founder and Director, until 2020, of the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) at Durham University. He is one of the originators of the “Cold dark matter'' theory of the formation of cosmic structures, specializing on supercomputer simulations of the evolution of the universe. He has published over 500 scientific papers and is one of the most frequently cited authors in the space science literature. Professor Frenk was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004 and has received numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Rumford medal of the Royal Society, the Dirac medal of the Institute of Physics, the Max Born medal of the German Physics Society, the Gruber Cosmology prize, the Hoyle medal, etc. He was awarded a CBE in the 2017 Queen's birthday honours list. He features regularly on radio and TV. 

 
Neutrinos and their connection to the matter-antimatter asymmetry

Dr Jessica Turner 

"Neutrinos are some of the most studied but least understood particles. No one knows why they are so light compared to other related particles of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. I will review a popular mechanism that explains this puzzle and simultaneously addresses how the Universe came to have more matter than antimatter. Importantly, I will discuss methods for testing these ideas."

Jessica Turner has been an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), Durham University, since October 2020. Before that, she was a research scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Illinois, USA (2017-2020). She received her PhD in theoretical physics from Durham University in 2017. Her main research interests are neutrinos and early universe physics. 

 
What is the dark energy, when and where was it generated?

Dr Sownak Bose 

"We now have conclusive evidence that our Universe is not only expanding, but that this expansion is accelerating. But what drives this accelerated expansion? What is the mysterious "dark energy" that is somehow able to overcome the sum total of all the gravity in the cosmos? In this talk, I will review the evidence for dark energy, and ways in which we can try to understand this theoretically — through the inclusion of new physics, or even rethinking the theory of gravity itself. Finally, I will highlight how we can test these models with upcoming surveys of galaxies."

Sownak Bose is an Assistant Professor and ''Future Leaders Fellow'' at the ICC. These prestigious 7 year-long grants are awarded by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation), the government funding agency for science in the UK. Dr Bose completed his PhD at the ICC with a thesis on dark matter and dark energy. His thesis won several prizes in 2018: the Keith Nicholas Prize from Durham Physics; the Winton Doctoral Prize; the Springer Thesis Prize; and the Royal Astronomical Societyʼs Michael Penston Prize. After graduating, Dr Bose was awarded an Institute for Theory and Computation Fellowship by Harvard University which he held from 2017 to 2021, when he returned to the UK. Dr Bose is enthusiastic about public science engagement and education. 

 
Was Einstein right? Black hole archaeology with gravitational waves

Dr Djuna Croon 

"Gravitational waves can be used to study some of the most mysterious objects in our Universe: black holes. In-spiralling binaries of black holes emit gravitational waves that we can detect billions of light years away. With already close to 100 detections, we are uncovering the properties of entire populations of these stellar remnants. As I will demonstrate in this talk, these properties tell us not only about black hole binaries, but also about their precursor stars and even about fundamental physics."

Djuna Croon is an Assistant Professor at the IPPP and a researcher in theoretical particle physics, astroparticle physics, and cosmology. Her work includes articles on cosmic inflation, extended Higgs sectors, boson stars, phase transitions, dark matter, supernova explosions, black holes, gravitational microlensing, and gravitational waves. She is an enthusiastic science communicator and is committed to making academia more inclusive. 

 
The origins of planets and the environments for life

Dr Jacob Kegerreis

"Our solar system used to be a much more violent place, with early planets crashing into each other to create the worlds we see today. I will talk about how different and potentially habitable planets evolve, how we use supercomputers to study the key stage of cataclysmic giant impacts and how new generations of high-resolution simulations are helping us tackle unsolved mysteries like the origin of the Moon and the striking diversity of exoplanets around distant stars."

Jacob Kegerreis holds a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship at the Ames Research Centre in California. He completed his PhD at the ICC at Durham University with a thesis primarily focused on simulating planetary giant impacts, for which he was awarded the Springer Thesis Prize. He regularly gives talks at astronomical societies and other outreach events, and creates 3D visualisations of his research that have gained millions of views online.