EVENT: Friends of the Library talk

We are now nearing a period in our cosmic time travel that will contain one of the Universe’s most profound events –the first light from the first star – the “dawn of creation”. This event will be found and studied by a new telescope which, when completed in 2020, will be the world’s largest astronomical facility. The telescope is called the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and Western Australia is currently the front-runner in an international competition to host the SKA. The remote desert of WA, home to Aboriginal peoples who are arguably the world’s first astronomers, may provide mankind with its clearest view of the first objects created – the seeds of the Universe we see around us today. In this talk, Professor Quinn will give an overview of our cosmic journey - what we have found so far, what mysteries we have uncovered and what we hope to find with the new generation of telescopes we are about to build.