Page 24 - Frontiers of the Universe

Thanks to detailed maps indicating a faint echo of the Big Bang— what astronomers call the “cosmic microwave background”—we know the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, give or take 20 million years. This is a staggering achievement in “precision cosmology,” but we still lack all the answers about how our Universe came to be.
CENTER FOR COSMOLOGY AND EXTREME ASTROPHYSICS
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and Extreme Astrophysics, IWeizmann scientists will tackle a range of wide-sweeping theoretical questions about the cosmos.
Astrophysicists and particle physicists will put their heads together to ask questions such as: What causes the Universe—which has been expanding since its very inception—to expand
at an ever-accelerating rate? How
can we explain the “disappearance” of antimatter, matter that is composed
of particles that correspond with “ordinary”matter? Howdotheextreme gravitational elds of superdense
objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes warp the local fabric of space and time? And much more.
This Center will support studies in which the Universe itself is a laboratory for testing the outer limits of physics.
n the Center for Cosmology