Chasing the Dawn of the Cosmos: Superconducting Detectors and the Fossil Radiation of the Universe

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the oldest light we can observe—a relic of the Big Bang that offers a snapshot of the Universe when it was just 380,000 years old. Hidden within it are precious clues about the birth of cosmic structures, dark matter, dark energy, and even the first fractions of a second of cosmic time. But to detect these incredibly faint signals, buried under overwhelming noise, we need extraordinary instruments: superconducting detectors capable of measuring temperature variations of just a few billionths of a degree.
In this talk, we will explore how these detectors—cooled to fractions of a degree above absolute zero and flown on space missions—allow us to peer into the primordial Universe. We’ll see how cutting-edge technology is pushing the boundaries of cosmological knowledge, and why observing the CMB is one of the most refined experiments ever designed to probe the origin of everything.