Speaker
Nabila Aghanim
Description
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a pillar of modern cosmology. Since the results of the COBE/FIRAS satellite in the nineties the CMB spectrum is known to be a quasi-perfect blackbody. However, both standard and non-standard physics processes inevitably lead to deviations from blackbody, named spectral distortions.
FOSSIL, proposed to ESA as its 8th medium-class mission, aims at achieving an unprecedented leap forward in sensitivity, allowing us to revisit the measurement of the CMB spectrum and to detect these spectral distortions, and thereby providing us with a unique opportunity to reveal novel probes of the early Universe, particle physics, and structure formation.