Cosmic Microwave Background

The oldest light in the universe—and one of our most powerful tools for understanding its evolution.

An illustration of Earth in silhouette with galaxies and the colorful CMB in the background.
Using data collected by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, researchers tracked how CMB light bends around distant galaxy clusters and found that gravity behaves as expected on the largest scales, effectively ruling out alternative theories like MOND. Matt Twombly for Simons Foundation

People

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Rediet Abebe

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

Rhiannon Adam headshot

Rhiannon Adam

Photographic Artist

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Alexandre Adam

Flatiron Research Fellow, Centers for Computational Astrophysics and Computational Mathematics

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Ryan Adams

Investigator, Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain

We’ve created an effective and robust framework to use observations of the universe to simultaneously infer fundamental cosmological properties and to develop new insights into the physics of galaxy formation.
Greg Bryan Director, Simons Collaboration on Learning the Universe

Stories & Features

SFARI spotlight image.

Simons Foundation Announces 2026–2027 Class of SURFiN Fellows

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How Math Helped Argentine Sparrows Relearn Lost Songs

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Applications Open for 2027 Fellows-to-Faculty Award Program

Research Teams

Learning the Universe

Simons Collaboration

Simons Observatory

Next-Generation Cosmology

Astronomical Data

Computational Astrophysics

Publications

Topological Phase Transitions Induced by Disorder in Magnetically Doped (Bi, Sb)\(_2\)Te\(_3\) Thin Films

October 13, 2026

Takuya Okugawa, Peizhe Tang, Rubio, Angel, and Dante M. Kennes

Single-particle spectral function formulated and calculated by variational Monte Carlo method with application to \(d\)-wave superconducting state

October 13, 2026

Charlebois, Maxime and Masatoshi Imada

Ultrasound evidence for a two-component superconducting order parameter in Sr\(_2\)RuO\(_4\)

October 13, 2026

S. Benhabib, C. Lupien, I. Paul, L. Berges, M. Dion, M. Nardone, et al.

Plaquette versus ordinary \(d\)-wave pairing in the \(t’\)-Hubbard model on a width 4 cylinder

October 13, 2026

C. Chung, Mingpu Qin, Zhang, Shiwei, Ulrich Schollwöck, and S. White

Video

Placeholder for video of a talk focused on CMB [e.g.Simone Ferraro: Self-Consistent Simulations of the Cosmic Microwave Background]

Researcher Spotlight

Adrian Bayer on the roof of the Simons Foundation offices, looking towards the sky.

Adrian Bayer: Unveiling the Universe’s Origins and Current State by Modeling Its Many Faces

January 21, 2026

Just as cities, communities and people have histories, so too does the universe. The galaxies and stars we see today took shape over billions of years of cosmic evolution. Using data science and machine learning, Adrian Bayer of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) reconstructs the past, interprets the present and forecasts the future of the cosmos. Bayer started as a research fellow this year at the CCA and is the co-leader of… Continue

Software & Data

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aLENS

Software
Simulates microtubule assemblies with motor proteins using Monte Carlo dynamics, constrained collision handling, and massive parallelization.

Astra

Software
Analysis framework for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) Milky Way Mapper.
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Astrometry.net

Software
Maps any astronomical image to sky coordinates (WCS) with no false positives, even without metadata, enabling real-time use across archives.
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BridgeStan

Software
BridgeStan gives in-memory access to Stan models via multiple languages, exposing log densities, gradients, Hessians, transforms, and predictions.

Talks & Lectures

GIZMO code dev meeting

October 12–14, 2026

Taking Pictures and Making Movies of Supermassive Black Holes

Lecture

October 14, 2026

6–7 p.m. ET

Speaker

Shep Doeleman

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2026 MPS Annual Meeting

Conference

October 15–16, 2026

AstroFest 2026

October 15, 2026

1–5 p.m. ET

Center for Computational Astrophysics

We develop cutting-edge tools and software packages to explore the inner workings of the universe.

Learn more
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