Astronomers at the University of Cambridge are using new telescopes and space missions to map the Universe from its first stars to the planets orbiting other suns. This work addresses a fundamental gap: we do not know exactly how the first stars and black holes ended the cosmic dark ages, how galaxies like the Milky Way assembled over billions of years, or how planetary systems form from swirling disks of gas and dust. The grant combines observations—of the cosmic microwave background, neutral hydrogen from the early Universe, and precise stellar motions from the Gaia spacecraft—with sophisticated computer simulations that model galaxy mergers, black hole growth, and protoplanetary disk evolution. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. It will produce the most detailed picture yet of how structure emerged from the Big Bang. Similar curiosity-driven astronomy has historically yielded unexpected technologies: CCD sensors, now ubiquitous in cameras and medical imaging, were developed for astronomical telescopes. A deeper understanding of galaxy formation and planetary system evolution could, over decades, inform everything from navigation algorithms to models of complex dynamical systems.
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This consolidated grant proposal is to support leading research in theoretical and observational astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA), University of Cambridge. On the largest scales, the proposal includes work to understand the origin and evolution of the Universe itself through analysis of precise observations of the cosmic microwave background with new ground-based telescopes, and signals from neutral hydrogen probing the era of cosmic dawn, when the first generation of stars and black holes reheated and reionized the cold and neutral post-recombination Universe, bringing the cosmic dark ages to an end. The Universe today is filled with galaxies, of which our own Milky Way is a not atypical example. A full understanding of galaxy formation and evolution requires multiple lines of attack. Observations of the resolved stellar populations in the Milky Way and its Local Group companions provide a detailed fossil record of the dynamical assemblies of the galaxies, the formation of stars, and the buildup of heavy elements over a wide range of mass scales and initial conditions. Researchers at the IoA lead key parts of the data processing for the ESA Gaia space mission, which is performing a survey of the Milky Way with unprecedented precision and volume. Several projects in this proposal will exploit the forthcoming third data release from Gaia to understand the dynamics of the Galaxy and its companions. At the other end of the scale, observations of distant galaxies spanning lookback times of up to 12 billion years provide direct measurements of the evolution of galaxy populations and the buildup of stars and metals with cosmic time. The light from these first galaxies likely led to the reionization of hydrogen in the intergalactic medium, when the age of the Universe was less than one billion years. Modelling this process requires sophisticated hydrodynamical simulations, including radiative transfer effects, and is a further focus of this proposal. It is now recognised that there is an intimate link between the evolution of galaxies and the origin and properties of super-massive black holes, which reside at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies. The regions close to black holes allow the exploration of physics at the extremes. The formation and properties of super-massive black holes and their relation to the galaxies will be explored in this grant with sophisticated computational simulations of merging galaxies. On much smaller scales within galaxies, the grant focusses of the formation of planetary systems through theoretical modelling of the evolution of protoplanetary disks (exploiting high-resolution imaging with ALMA) and their associated debris disks, and on the atmospheres and geology of extrasolar planets.
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