Physics and Astronomy Calendar

The recent discovery of a giant, 280 Mpc diameter void in the universe involved a number of puzzle pieces - fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, radio surveys of the nearby universe, the evolution of dark-matter dominated large scale structures, and the role of dark energy in this evolution. We will show how these puzzle pieces come together to create the "late integrated Sachs-Wolfe" effect, one of the perturbations on the CMB as it propagates through the universe and then leads to the discovery of the giant void. We will briefly discuss the implications of this void for our understanding of the development of large scale structure in the universe.