Birmingham Astrophysics - Rolling Grant 2007-2012

伯明翰天体物理与空间研究小组的工作旨在提高我们对宇宙的理解，以及支配其结构和增长的引力。我们的河外星系研究旨在发现星系（如我们的银河系）是如何从大爆炸后充满宇宙的原始气体中的微小波动发展起来的，以及探索神秘的“暗物质”，它似乎占宇宙物质的90%以上。迄今为止，我们对宇宙的认识几乎完全来自对从太空到达地球的电磁辐射（从无线电波到伽马射线）的研究。然而，一个全新的天文学“窗口”即将打开，其基础是时空中被称为引力波的传播涟漪。探测这些信号的要求非常高，但大型激光干涉仪现在已经非常接近于首次探测到它们，伯明翰小组完全参与了这些实验，并计划在未来十年内将这些技术转移到太空中。这将最终使我们能够研究来自巨大黑洞和大爆炸本身的引力信号。我们正致力于首次探测引力波，同时也在探索将引力波研究变成天文学真正分支所需的新技术。

The work of the Birmingham Astrophysics & Space Research group aims to improve our understanding of the Universe, and the force of gravity which governs its structure and growth. Our extragalactic studies aim to discover the way in which galaxies, such as our own Milky Way galaxy, have developed from the small fluctuations present in the primordial gas which filled the Universe after the Big Bang, as well as probing the mysterious 'dark matter' which appears to account for over 90% of the matter in the Universe at large. Our knowledge of the cosmos to date is gleaned almost entirely from study of the electromagnetic radiation (from radio waves to gamma rays) which reaches the Earth from space. However, a whole new astronomical 'window' is about to open, based on the propagating ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. Detection of these signals is hugely demanding, but large laser-interferometers are now very close to detecting them for the first time, and the Birmingham group is fully involved in these experiments, and in the plans to move these techniques into space within the next decade. This will ultimately allow us to study the gravitational signals from giant black holes, and from the Big Bang itself. We are working towards the first detection of gravitational waves, but also exploring the new techniques which will be required to turn the study of gravitational waves into a true branch of astronomy.