Consensus and confusion in cosmology

Prof. Dr. Marc Kamionkowski
(Johns Hopkins University),

Heinrich Hertz Lecture 2024.

The past quarter century has been a period of rapid
progress in our understanding of the origin and
evolution of the Universe. We now have a simple
mathematical model that can account for the gross
features of our Universe as well as detailed informa-
tion from precise measurements and observations.
The model requires, though, several ingredients,
such as dark matter and dark energy, that are not
to be found within our current understanding of
the fundamental laws of physics. There has also
emerged, in the past few years, some inconsistencies
between various measurements. In this talk, I will
describe the triumphs of our current cosmological
model, as well as its shortcomings.