Physics beyond the Horizon

Abstract

The history of human knowledge is often highlighted by our efforts to explore beyond our apparent horizon. In this talk, I will describe how this challenge has now evolved into our quest to understand the physics at/beyond the cosmological horizon, some twenty orders of magnitude above Columbus\' original goal. I then recount how the study of physics on the horizon scale has led to the successful development of inflationary cosmology, and how we can use the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in the Cosmic Microwave Background to probe cosmological physics, such as late-time inflation, the nature of gravity, and primordial non-gaussianity on the horizon scale.