When Particle Physics Gets Hot: A Journey Through the Early Universe

Modern particle physics seeks to answer one of the oldest questions in science: what is the Universe made of? Remarkably, some of the deepest insights into the fundamental constituents of matter come not only from particle accelerators, but also from the cosmos itself. 
In this seminar, we will travel back in time to an epoch when the Universe was billions of times hotter and denser than it is today. We will see how the laws governing elementary particles shaped the evolution of the early Universe, how the first atomic nuclei and atoms were formed, and how the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background revealed a fossil relic of this primordial era.
Along the way, we will explore the intimate connection between particle physics and cosmology, and discover how observations of the Universe point toward new physics beyond the Standard Model, including the mysterious dark matter and the origin of the cosmic matter–antimatter asymmetry.