Program

Cosmos

The goals of this project are to determine fundamental cosmological parameters, map the cosmic evolution of the Universe, and explore the astrophysics of massive binary stars. Gravitational waves provide a powerful new tool for mapping the cosmological properties of the Universe and the extreme events that produce them. We will use GW sources as standard sirens to produce an accurate measurement of the cosmic expansion rate, helping to unravel a key unsolved mystery in cosmology. The population of compact binary mergers these GW reveal will transform our understanding of the evolution of massive stars, their binary interactions and star cluster dynamics. Meanwhile we will make use of the dramatically increased sample of localised fast radio bursts over the Centre lifetime to develop a second and completely independent cosmological probe, one that can measure both the average properties of the baryonic content of the Universe and trace the structure of the cosmic web.