Virtual Event: Dan HooperAt the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds

Early bird ticket offer £12

Dan Hooper, theoretical astrophysicist, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Explore the mysteries of the universe’s first seconds at the latest New Scientist online event.

Over the past few decades, we have made incredible discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the big bang.

In this talk, Dan Hooper will examine how physicists are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the big bang, and to address mysteries such as how our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter.

Could these tools enable us to discover the nature of dark matter and how it was formed in our universe’s first moments? Can we lift the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it?

Your ticket includes:

- Live lecture lasting 40 minutes
- Q&A with Dan Hooper
- On-demand access to a recording of the lecture and Q&A, available to watch for 12 months
- An additional 40-minute physics lecture filmed at our Instant Expert masterclass in London
- Bonus New Scientist content

About the speaker:

Dan Hooper is a senior scientist and the head of the theoretical astrophysics group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, as well as a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the interface between particle physics and cosmology, and is especially interested in questions about dark matter and the early universe. He is the author of three books, including At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds
The event will be hosted by Valerie Jamieson, New Scientist Events’ creative director

Event information:

This online event will start at 6pm BST/1pm EDT on Thursday 9 July and will last for approximately one hour. Access to a recording of the event will be available from 10 July exclusively to ticket purchasers for the 12 months following the live event.

About the Book

Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history.

Taking readers into the remarkable world of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it.

Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.

Dan Hooper is a senior scientist and the head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Dark Cosmos and Nature’s Blueprint (both Smithsonian/Harper Collins). He lives in Oak Park, Illinois. Twitter @DanHooperAstro