November 2024 Thinking Beyond- New Light on Dark Energy: The Mystery Deepens

The “Thinking Beyond” webinar series features renowned physicists Paul Davies, Sara Walker and Maulik Parikh from the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University and addresses big questions/topics in science. This month, Tamara Davis will present the topic and will be joined by Paul Davies and Maulik Parikh.

After 6 years of painstaking observations, an international team has garnered evidence that dark energy may be changing with time. I shall outline how the Dark Energy Survey observations of about 1,500 supernovae have pinned down the density of dark energy with unprecedented precision, and also enabled a precise measurement of time dilation due to the expansion of the Universe. But what would be the implications of time-dependent dark energy for fundamental physics and the fate of the universe? 

Professor Tamara Davis did her PhD at the University of New South Wales in 2004, followed by postdocs at Australian National University and the University of Copenhagen before settling at the University of Queensland.  She currently leads the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) and is Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).  She received the Australian Academy of Science’s Nancy Millis Medal, the Astronomical Society of Australia’s Ellery Lectureship, and an Order of Australia for "significant service to astrophysical science, to education, and to young astronomers”.  She is an avid communicator of science and occasional guest host of ABC TV’s “Catalyst”, including the episode “Black Hole Hunters” which won the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award. When not doing physics she loves sport and has captained Australia in Ultimate frisbee.