Research on how the universe began, what it is made of and what what kind of objects it contains is going through something of a golden age. Space missions, large telescopes and ground-based experiments are bringing today’s researchers tantalizingly close to some of the answers science has sought through past millennia.
But new questions continue to arise: How many planets similar to Earth are orbiting other stars, and how can we set out to find them? Why, at some point some 13 billion years ago, did a tiny, hot universe begin expanding in a Big Bang? These are some of the topics covered in the 2012-2013 astrophysics and cosmology lecture series organized by the BBVA Foundation.

The Conferences are provided in English language with Spanish subtitles and the booklet is edited in English and Spanish.

Speakers:

• Didier Queloz, Observatory of Geneva: Exoplanets, the Quest for New Worlds in the Cosmos
• Andrei Linde, Stanford University: Universe or Multiverse?
• Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin-Madison: IceCube, a Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole
• Victoria Kaspi, McGill University, Montreal: Neutron Stars, a Cosmic Gift
• Rashid Sunyaev, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching; Space Research Institute, Moscow; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton: Clusters of Galaxies, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation and Cosmology
• Brian Schmidt, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra: The Accelerating Universe

Director of the series:

• Ana Achúcarro, Leiden University, University of the Basque Country.