Cosmology — the study of how the Universe began and how its structures formed and evolved — has always been at the frontier of human knowledge, seeding religions, cementing civilizations and challenging scientific thought. It is remarkable that a compelling, empirically verifiable account of the Universe’s history has only emerged during the past few decades. Dr. Julio Navarro will review the observations and theories that have shaped our present cosmological paradigm, the enigmas they have uncovered and what they tell us about the fundamental laws of physics as well as the fate and origin of the Universe.

The initial conditions of our Universe can be summarized on a single sheet of paper. Yet the Universe is full of complex structures today, such as stars, galaxies and groups of galaxies. Dr. Avi Loeb will describe how complexity emerged in the form of the first stars out of the simple initial state of the Universe at early cosmic times. The future of the Universe is even more surprising. Over the past decade, it was realized that the cosmic expansion has been accelerating. If this accelerated expansion will continue into the future, then within one hundred billion years there will be no galaxies left for us to observe within the cosmic horizon except one — the merger product between our own Milky Way galaxy and its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.

The most recently discovered population of stars in the Galaxy are the “Hypervelocity Stars.” These objects are shooting out of the Milky Way at such high speeds they will escape the Galaxy’s gravitational pull and never return. How did they get their enormous velocities? What can we learn about the Milky Way’s dark matter halo, star formation and the supermassive black hole at the galactic center by studying them? Dr. Juna Kollmeier will address these questions and more.