Special TAPIR Seminar

Cosmological observations give us some of the clearest views of the history of the universe and the laws that shaped it.  Yet, despite the incredible progress, our view is still quite limited.  The next generation of observations hope to break down some of the barriers to our understanding and provide qualitatively new insights.  I will give an overview of some of these directions and, in particular, I will emphasize implications of a measurement of the cosmic neutrino background using the CMB.  I will explain the importance of a CMB Stage IV experiment for achieving important thresholds for beyond the Standard Model physics.