SPECIAL HEP - ASTRO SEMINAR | Planck, BICEP, and the Early Universe

The cosmic microwave background contains a wealth of information about cosmology as well as high energy physics. It tells us about the composition and geometry of the universe, the properties of neutrinos, dark matter, and even the conditions in our universe long before the cosmic microwave background was emitted. After a brief introduction, I will discuss various aspects of the recently released Planck full mission data before turning to a discussion of string inspired models and the search for their signatures. Finally, I will turn to the search for primordial B-modes.