Cosmology from the Microwave Background

Physics Colloquium 22nd May 2015 delivered by Professor Jo Dunkley The Cosmic Microwave Background continues to provide us with a wealth of information about the universe. I will show new results from the complete Planck satellite mission, which mapped the microwave anisotropy in both temperature and polarization from 2009-13, and describe other recent progress from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile. I will discuss the status of the LCDM cosmological model, which is now so well established but has significant features yet to explain. I will describe some future directions for investigating the physics of the very early universe, and of the cosmic dark sector.