Rick Watkins (Willamette University)

Date: Tue. April 1st, 2025, 11:30 am-12:30 pm
Location: Rock 221, Foldy Room

Testing Cosmology with Large Scale Flows of Galaxies

The standard model of cosmology assumes that the Universe is uniform on large scales.  Thus it predicts that galaxy velocities averaged over large enough scales should approach zero.  This prediction can be tested by analyzing galaxy velocity catalogs that cover large volumes of space.  After giving an overview of the standard cosmological model, I will discuss some of the challenges of doing such an analysis along with methods we’ve developed that can address these challenges.  Finally, I will present the results of our analysis, which suggests that large scale motions are significantly larger than expected.