Deciphering the Beginning
Professor Raphael Flauger (University of Texas Austin)

The cosmic microwave background contains a wealth of information about cosmology as well as high energy physics. It tells us about the composition and geometry of the universe, the properties of neutrinos, dark matter, and even the conditions in our universe long before the cosmic microwave background was emitted. After a general introduction, I will discuss lessons from the recently released Planck full mission data for models of the early universe. Finally, I will turn to the search for primordial gravitational waves and provide an outlook what we may hope to learn from current and future CMB experiments.