  {"id":183,"date":"2021-01-07T21:38:45","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T02:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/science\/profiles\/?post_type=faculty&#038;p=183"},"modified":"2025-11-06T14:13:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:13:37","slug":"matthew-johnson","status":"publish","type":"faculty","link":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/science\/profiles\/faculty\/matthew-johnson\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Research Interests<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The goal of my research is to understand the fundamental laws of nature through their impact on cosmology. I am primarily a theorist, dabbling in cosmology, field theory, string theory, and gravitation. I am actively engaged in research on cosmic inflation, eternal inflation, topological defects, and models of dark energy. I also design data analysis algorithms to confront fundamental theory with observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Here is a sampling of the questions that drive my research: How big is the universe? What might lie beyond our observable universe, and how could we confirm or disprove various proposals? What role do the extra dimensions predicted by string theory play in cosmology? What is the fundamental nature of space-time singularities? Are there new ways of looking at cosmological datasets that could be useful when confronting theories with data? Can computer simulations of the very early universe shed light on its possible initial conditions and evolution?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Specialties<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Theoretical cosmology, especially cosmic inflation, eternal inflation, dark energy, and confrontations with observations; Field theory; String theory; Gravitation;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZSpfYilXYTc&amp;autoplay=1\">YouTube Video<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","department":[6],"research-area":[9,13],"un-goal":[],"research-method":[30,29],"graduate-program-membership":[40],"graduate-program-physics":[68],"admin-faculty-title-department":[],"program":[],"class_list":["post-183","faculty","type-faculty","status-publish","hentry","department-phas","research-area-astronomy","research-area-hep","research-method-computational","research-method-theoretical","graduate-program-membership-physics-gp","graduate-program-physics-grad-program-physics-full-member"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Matthew Johnson - Faculty of Science Profiles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/science\/profiles\/faculty\/matthew-johnson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Matthew Johnson - Faculty of Science Profiles\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Research Interests The goal of my research is to understand the fundamental laws of nature through their impact on cosmology. I am primarily a theorist, dabbling in cosmology, field theory, string theory, and gravitation. I am actively engaged in research on cosmic inflation, eternal inflation, topological defects, and models of dark energy. 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