Episode 103: Lambasting Lambda CDM

Shoot, someone made the mistake of letting Cole pick the episode topic. In this episode, Cole, Cormac, and Shashank talk about the big boy on cosmology campus: Lambda CDM. This model has gotten a bit too big for its britches we think: what are the things about the universe that this model can’t explain? Shashank gives us a tour through the dark matter hearts of galaxies which don’t match up with cosmological predictions and Cormac shows us how 1500 (ish? We’re not clear on this one.) supernovae could hint at a fundamental flaw in Lambda CDM.

Astrobites:

Testing cosmology with the DES 5-year supernovae dataset:

https://astrobites.org/2024/03/22/template-post-21/

Digging into the Core: Dark Matter and Dwarf Galaxies

https://astrobites.org/2015/07/14/digging-into-the-core-dark-matter-and-dwarf-galaxies/

Space Sound:

Listen to the hum of NANOGrav's gravitational wave background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGO0wQK9ns4