Professor Shaun Cole from the Department of Physics at Durham University and winner of 2014’s prestigious Shaw Prize, will give a general review of the Hot Big Bang and the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Shaun will then focus on how sound waves from the early universe can be used as a yard stick to measure the expansion history of the universe.

This will lead to a description of some of the big projects (Euclid and DESI) that are being planned to exploit this to measure the properties of Dark Energy.