A landmark space telescope mission will use Cardiff University technology and expertise to find out more about the earliest stages of the Universe and how it was created over 13.7 billion years ago.
The Lite satellite for the study of B-mode polarization and inflation from cosmic background Radiation Detection (LiteBIRD) mission will analyse the dying embers left over from the Big Bang, to test the current theory of how our Universe expanded immediately after it was formed.
Astronomers believe that immediately after the Big Bang, the Universe underwent an extremely rapid exponential expansion, a process called cosmological inflation.
Their theory predicts that primordial gravitational waves – the very first ripples in space and time in our universe – should result from this rapid expansion, and will be observable in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – light from the very edge of the observable Universe.
Coordinated by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), LiteBIRD aims to launch in the early 2030s with a combination of high, mid, and low frequency telescopes to examine polarisation in the CMB with unprecedented sensitivity, testing the theory of cosmological inflation.
Leading the UK contribution to the mission, Professors Peter Hargrave and Erminia Calabrese of Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy will design and build the optics for two telescopes, and the filters for the third, Japanese-built low-frequency telescope.
