Observing echoes of the Big Bang in the Universe's most distant light

As we peer out into space, what is the most distant light we can see? The answer is the cosmic microwave background radiation, the faint afterglow of the hot Big Bang across the sky, which has travelled for almost 14 billion years to reach us. Within the microwave background, at the edge of the observable Universe, we can see the tiny ripples out of which galaxies such as our own later formed. In this talk, Assoc. Prof. Chris Blake from Swinburne's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing will explain the crucial importance of this faint radiation for establishing our modern picture of the Universe, and will describe recent breakthrough measurements from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.