Welcome to the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology

“The CTC exists to develop theories of the Universe which are both mathematically consistent and observationally testable.” Professor Stephen Hawking

The Purpose of CTC

There are two circumstances in which the hidden basic fabric of the Universe is violently shaken and unveiled: in the enormous temperatures and densities of the Hot Big Bang and during the extreme collapse to form a black hole. CTC focuses on mathematical theories of these pivotal physical events, confronting them with observational data to gain new insight into the fundamental structure of the Universe and its origin. As well as supporting fellows and visiting professors, CTC's activities include hosting timely workshops and international conferences on frontier topics in cosmology.

Professor Paul Shellard, Director

New insights found in black hole collisions

New research provides revelations about the most energetic event in the universe — the merging of two spinning, orbiting black holes into a much larger black hole. An international team of astronomers, including from the University of Cambridge, have found solutions to ...more »

Eddie Redmayne wins Best Actor for The Theory of Everything

Congratulations to Eddie Redmayne on winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his revelatory performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The honour goes alongside his awards for Best Actor at the Golden Globes and the Baftas. ...more »

GRChombo, a new numerical general relativity code with adaptive mesh refinement

We have created a new code to solve the Einstein equations of general relativity numerically called GRChombo. The novel feature of this code compared to other existing codes is that it has block-structured adaptive mesh refinement. This unique feature allows us to accurately ...more »

New lecturer joins CTC

The CTC is very pleased to welcome Dr Jorge Santos as a new Lecturer in Theoretical Physics. Jorge obtained his PhD from Cambridge in 2010 and has been working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara and Stanford University. Here he describes the ...more »

COSMOS allows us to peer backward to the Big Bang

The CTC’s COSMOS supercomputer is helping us to push back our understanding of the universe to the first moments after the Big Bang. The Planck satellite has yielded the highest precision measurements so far of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation – the radiation ...more »