Prof. Dr. Hans Martin Schmid is a distinguished researcher and professor at ETH Zurich, specializing in high-resolution and high-contrast instrumentation for ground-based telescopes. His research primarily focuses on imaging and imaging polarimetry of planetary systems and stars with circumstellar matter. He has significantly contributed to the development of advanced instruments like the SPHERE Planet Finder for the 8m VLT telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. Installed in 2014, SPHERE, which includes the Zurich IMaging POLarimeter (ZIMPOL) developed under Schmid’s leadership, is renowned for its exceptional angular resolution and high-performance imaging polarimetry. This instrument has been pivotal in studying circumstellar disks around young stars, circumstellar shells around evolved stars, and the atmospheres of extended red giant stars, as well as in the search for extrasolar planets and low-mass stellar companions.

Throughout his career, Prof. Dr. Schmid has held various prestigious positions, including at the Institute for Astronomy at ETH Zurich, the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories in Australia, and the Landessternwarte in Heidelberg, Germany. Since 2001, he has been a senior scientist at ETH Zurich, where he became a titular professor in 2013. His teaching repertoire includes courses on interstellar and intergalactic matter, astronomical instrumentation, and extrasolar planets. He has also supervised numerous doctoral theses on topics such as polarimetry of gas planets, high-precision polarimetry for extrasolar planet search, and characterization of planetary systems, contributing to the advancement of astrophysical research and instrumentation.

What is the nature of the universe that exists beyond our cosmic horizon and can we ever detect them?

I expect, that the universe is the same as the currently observable universe if we do not consider volumes which are orders of magnitude larger (>> factor 1000) than the space volume currently observable. I also expect that we will not see a different universe during the lifetime of the solar system. It would also be a very special coincidence that a transition of the properties of the universe takes place during the short time frame of the human civilization.

Why is it significant?

We need to infer constraints on the formation and evolution of the observable universe from the physical conditions within our cosmic horizon.  

Where/how is the questions likely to be answered?

New empirical evidence about the nature of the dark matter, the dark energy, and other possible phenomena to be detected in the future within the observable universe, like primordial gravitational waves, could lead to a plausible theory about the formation and origin of our universe. However, it seems very likely, that such a theory will remain “speculative”, because it will not be possible to prove it based on empirical results.