Dr Mark Sullivan

We live in a bizarre universe: a universe that is both expanding, and doing so at an ever faster rate. This acceleration apparently defies the slowing in the expansion rate expected from the gravitational attraction of stars and galaxies. Understanding this acceleration, and the "Dark Energy" that drives it, is one of the greatest scientific challenges of our age. We think that dark energy makes up about 75% of the energy / matter in the universe, but virtually nothing else is known about it.

I'll show how observations of distant cosmic explosions, called supernovae, can measure cosmic geometry and help to understand the nature of this mysterious dark energy.