Marc Siegar, JAC, 4-Oct-2003

"The Big Bang and the Seeds for Galaxy Formation"

Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered that most galaxies in the Universe are 
moving away from us, we have known that the Universe is expanding. We 
also now know, that the seeds for galaxies must result from instabilities 
in the very first fraction of a second. In this talk I will present a 
history of how our ideas of the evolution of the Universe have changed 
over time, starting with the discoveries of Einstein and Hubble, including 
the ideas of inflation by Guth and finishing with recent discoveries of 
small temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background by the 
COsmic Background Exploerer (COBE) and observations of sub-mm galaxies (at 
JCMT) which are believed to be the very first galaxies. I will also 
discuss the growth of large scale structure in the Universe.


Marc Seigar:   UKIRT Support Astronomer, Telescope Scientist