Colloquia

I present galaxy clustering results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that reveal the signature of acoustic oscillations of the photon-baryon fluid in the first million years of the Universe. The scale of this feature can be computed and hence the detection in the galaxy clustering serves as a standard ruler, giving a geometric distance to a redshift of 0.35. I will discuss the implications of this measurement for the composition of the universe, including dark energy and spatial curvature. I will close with a more general discussion of SDSS-III, a new collaborative project that will feature a large redshift survey aimed at refining the acoustic oscillation distance scale to 1% as well as surveys for extrasolar planets and the structure of the Milky Way.