Planned public lecture and colloquia — Application for the Origins Project Prize Meng Su From the Gamma-ray Bubbles to the Cosmic Microwave Background: The Origins of the Super-massive Black Holes, Dark Matter, and the Universe I have a broad range of research interests in many areas of cosmology and astrophysics. The core purpose of my research activities is to advance the frontier of physics by observing the Uni- verse. This includes discovering unexpected gigantic structure in the Milky Way, searching for signals from dark matter particles in gamma rays and cosmic rays, and finding evidence for pri- mordial gravitational waves as a smoking gun signal of the cosmic inflation. In addition to using existing telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum, I lead research groups towards next gener- ation spacebome gamma-ray detectors and ground-based telescopes to measure the faint polarized signal of the Cosmic Microwave Background. I will cover these broad research areas in the public lecture and the three departmental colloquia, with a focus on interesting recent findings. The public lecture: Double Bubble Trouble in Our Milky Way: Surprises When You Look Up with Gamma-ray Goggles Abstract: Astronomers have been studying our home galaxy — the Milky Way for centuries, however, we still find it full of surprises. In this talk, I will describe a spectacular mysterious phenomenon we recently discovered in our Milky Way: a pair of gigantic expanding bubbles (known as the Fermi bubbles) shining most brightly in energetic gamma rays. The whole structure has a size of , 50,000 light years, almost the size of the Milky Way disk, and may be only a few million years old. The outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy. This double-bubble structure is most likely created by some episode of large energy in