Chris Hirata (Cosmologist) Wiki, Biography, Age, Wife, Family, Net Worth

In 2010, with Dmitriy Tseliakhovich, he pointed to an unprecedented effect in cosmological perturbation theory for the calculation of the formation of the first structures in the universe. It is based on the fact that the speed of sound in baryonic matter (as opposed to dark matter) decreased drastically (from relativistic to thermal velocities) when the first atoms formed (recombination epoch), which leads to supersonic velocity currents of baryonic matter (which under gravitational influence of faster dark matter moves) and quadratic perturbation terms. According to Hirata and Tseliakhovich, this leads to a suppression of the formation of the first structures with observable effects.

Hirata was a 13-year-old child prodigy when he won the gold medal in 1996 at the International Physics Olympiad. He studied physics at Caltech from the age of 14 to 18, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2001. He did research at the age of 16 for NASA on the colonization of Mars and received his PhD under the supervision of Uros Seljak in 2005 from Princeton University in Astrophysics (thesis: “Weak Gravitational Lensing Theory and Data Analysis”). From 2005 to 2007 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. From 2006 to 2012 he was assistant professor and then full professor at Caltech before moving to the Ohio State University the following academic year in the same capacity. He is currently a professor at OSU’s Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP).

Christopher Michael Hirata (born November 30, 1982 in Ypsilanti, Michigan) is an American cosmologist and astrophysicist.