102 Cardwell Hall
The two big questions in modern cosmology are: What is the nature of Dark Energy? And does gravity follow Einstein's general relativity on very large scales? Both of these questions can be addressed by observing distribution of distant galaxies and analyzing statistical properties of their spatial distribution. By looking at the patterns in the galaxy distribution in available data we were able to measure the expansion rate and the growth rate of the Universe with a few percent precision. The next generation of galaxy surveys will enable us to study earlier epochs in cosmic evolution and will push the measurements to a sub-percent precision. I will talk about what kind of patterns can be find in the galaxy distribution and how we use this information to infer properties of gravity and dark energy. I will also describe how the experiments work and what kind of information we expect to get in near future.
