The Daily Bulletin Archive

Dejan Stojkovic, associate professor of physics from the University at Buffalo, will give a lecture on cosmology at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, September 20, in Science Building 272. The study of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe is one of the most exciting research fields in modern science. In the last 20 years, a huge amount of observational data has allowed us for the first time to formulate the "standard model of cosmology." While the evidence supporting it is enormous, the model is not without problems. The most important puzzle is that 96 percent of the content of our universe seems to be missing. This missing content is often labeled as dark matter (the missing mass) and dark energy (a mysterious ingredient that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe). The history of modern cosmology will be given as well as very recent developments, with possible directions in which the solutions to the puzzles we are facing may be found.