Hidden Universes: Rethinking the Math of Cosmology

Video Description

We are living in an extraordinary era of cosmology. With telescopes like James Webb peering deeper than ever, detectors like LIGO capturing the tremors of colliding black holes, and massive sky surveys mapping millions of events, we are swimming in data. Yet the greatest puzzles remain unsolved. Dark matter. Dark energy. The accelerating expansion of space. The subtle fluctuations that made galaxies possible. To tackle these mysteries, cosmologists may need more than new instruments — they may need new mathematics. In this talk, theoretical physicist Sarah Shandera explores why our reductionist, particle-based approach might not be enough, and how treating the universe as an open system could open fresh paths of discovery. By embracing hidden connections, quantum entanglement, and the limits of observation, Shandera shows how the next breakthroughs may come not from what we see — but from what we cannot. 📅 Stay in the loop: Sign up for our newsletter: https://landing.perimeterinstitute.ca/newsletter-signup 🔬 Support science: Donate to Perimeter: https://perimeterinstitute.ca/info/donors About the Speaker: Sarah Shandera is a Professor of Physics and the Director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos at Penn State. She received her PhD in physics from Cornell University in 2006 and held postdoctoral positions at Columbia University’s Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics and at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics before joining the faculty at Penn State in 2011.