Asia Pacific Physics Week 2023 (APPW2023)

Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023  

2:00 PM - 2:40 PM  Plenary Talk  Geraint F. Lewis (University of Sydney) 

Supermassive black holes, exploding stars, and time in the early universe

Geraint F. Lewis

Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics A28,

The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

A key cosmological prediction of our cosmological models is that we should see the distant universe run in slow motion, time dilated by the influence of expanding space. However, the hunt for this cosmic time dilation in quasars, highly luminous supermassive black holes, has failed to find this effect – until now! In this talk, as well as reviewing our understanding of the fundamentals of our cosmos, I will present our latest work on the cosmological time dilation of quasars, revealing what we found and what it means. As well as confirming that we truly live in an expanding universe, these findings hammer nails into the coffins of more outlandish cosmological ideas.