In 1917, Albert Einstein inserted a term called the `cosmological constant' into his theory of general relativity to predict a stationary universe. A decade later, when it became clear that our Universe was expanding, Einstein ab andoned the constant calling it the 'biggest blunder' of his life.
However, lately, Einstein's biggest blunder has made a dramatic comeback with scientists discovering an accelerating Universe filled with some form of energy density counteracting gravity. So, is the cosmological constant really the mysterious 'dark energy' or is it something else? How can we hope to unravel this mystery?
About the Speaker:-
Subha Majumdar is a faculty member in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, working on various aspects of theoretical and observational cosmology. He is an alumnus of St Xavier's College, Kolkata, Calcutta University and IISc Bangalore, followed by research fellowships at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign and CITA, University of Toronto. He has been an academic guest faculty at Excellence Cluster Universe, Munich (2010) and ETH, Zurich (2014), and was joint faculty at ICT S-TIFR, Bangalore (2012-2015). Subha was also a Kavli Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences and is Simons Associate at ICTP, Trieste. He has been a member of multiple international cosmology collaborations and surveys (like RCS, THEIA, SpARCS, SKA-India, CMB-Bharat, etc).
