School of Physics Colloquium: Prof. Elena Pierpaoli, University of Southern California

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation allows us to study processes of the very early Universe. The detailed study of its anisotropies with the Planck satellite allowed to determine cosmological parameters at unprecedented level of precision. As a byproduct, it also provided important results in several areas of astrophysics such as the detection of clusters through their Sunyavev-Zeldovich signature and characterization of Galactic emission at microwave and infrared wavelengths. The Planck satellite, which was launched in 2009, has recently released a new set of data which also include polarization results. I will review the main achievements of the new release, including the determination of main cosmological parameters, epoch of star formation, galaxy clusters detection and use. I will also discuss the recent news about the detection and subsequent non-detection of primordial gravitational waves.