Speaker: Jeffrey McMahon (U-M Physics)

Inflation, a theory that incorporates physics at an energy scale a trillion times higher than can be observed at the Large Hadron Collider, is currently the best working model to describe our Universe at the earliest times. Fortuitously, this theory predicts signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) that we are now using to study extremely high energy physics and the conditions at the earliest times in our Universe.