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This event was formerly titled 'Decoding the big bang'

Just a century ago, observational evidence established the existence of other galaxies besides our own. Soon afterwards, it was discovered that the Universe is expanding, driving a profound change in our understanding of the cosmos. In 1998, the prevailing cosmological paradigm was again upended by the discovery that the Universe's expansion is accelerating.

Since then, the remarkable progress in cosmology, spanning Peiris's research career, has been driven by the close interplay between theory and observations. Observational discoveries have led to a Standard Model of cosmology with ingredients not present in the standard model of particle physics – dark matter, dark energy, and a primordial origin for cosmic structure. The physical nature of these ingredients remains a mystery. The race to unravel this cosmic puzzle is now underway, motivating a new generation of ambitious sky surveys across the electromagnetic spectrum and using new messengers such as gravitational waves.

Peiris will describe some highlights from her journey through this rapidly changing cosmological landscape in this discourse. She will also discuss how laboratory experiments are helping us test new fundamental physics paradigms developed to explain cosmological observations.

About the speaker:

Hiranya Peiris holds the Professorship of Astrophysics (1909) at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.

After obtaining her undergraduate degree at Cambridge, Professor Peiris completed her PhD at Princeton. She was a Hubble Fellow at Chicago before returning to Cambridge as a STFC Halliday Fellow. She was then appointed to a lectureship (2009) and Professorship (2015) at UCL. She was Director of the Oskar Klein Centre in Stockholm (2016-2022) and Director of the UCL Cosmoparticle Initiative (2016-2023).

Professor Peiris conducts interdisciplinary research based on extracting fundamental physics from cosmological data. She has led analyses of cosmological survey data from multiple major international facilities, as well as making major contributions to theoretical cosmology and statistical astronomy.

Her work has been recognised by awards such as the IOP Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize (2018), the Max Born Prize of the German Physical Society and the IOP (2021), and the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021). Her contributions to survey cosmology have been recognised through a share of the Gruber Cosmology Prize (2012) and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2018), both awarded to the WMAP Science Team. She was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2022.

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Discourses are one of the Ri’s oldest and most prestigious series of talks. Since 1825, audiences in the theatre have witnessed countless mind-expanding moments, including the first public liquefaction of air by James Dewar, the announcement of the electron by JJ Thomson and over 100 lectures by Michael Faraday. In more recent times, we have had Nobel laureates, Fields medal winners, scientists, authors and artists – all from the cutting-edge of their field. Discourses are an opportunity for the best and brightest to share their work with the world.

Steeped in nearly two centuries of tradition, a Discourse is more than just a lecture. To keep the focus on the topic, presenters begin sharply at 7:30pm without introduction and we lock the speaker into a room ten minutes ahead of the start (legend has it that a speaker once tried to escape!). Some of our guests dress smartly for our Discourse events to add to this sense of occasion.

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Find out more about the history of Discourses on our blog.

The doors will open at approximately 6.45pm, with a prompt start at 7.30pm. There will be a brief question/answer period after the talk.

Latecomers will be admitted to the gallery.

Event image by Pixabay via Pexels