Engineering Frontier Science Talk

The hunt for light from the first stars and galaxies in our Universe is a long-standing quest in modern astronomy. This first light, known as the cosmic dawn, carries clues about how the earliest stars formed and how our Universe began to take shape. But this extremely faint signal is overwhelmed by many sources, ranging from our galaxy to everyday sources such as FM radio transmissions. To overcome this challenge, scientists look for some of the quietest places on Earth to carry out these precision experiments. 
This pursuit has taken us to the Arctic, where India operates a research station that provides a pristine environment for such experiments. In this talk, I will introduce the quest to detect signals from the first stars in the Universe, describe how experiments at the Raman Research Institute are designed to capture them, and share the experience of conducting astronomy research in extreme conditions, focusing in particular on our recent expedition to the Arctic.