"Dust and Metals in the Early Universe"

Essentially all the heavy elements in the universe were formed through stellar processes, and a census of these 'metals' provides a window into the star formation history of the last 14 billion years. However, such a cosmic census of metals reveals inconsistencies between models and observations - a missing metals problem that manifests itself at both high and low redshifts. In particular, there is concern that one of the prime techniques for measuring cosmic metallicities, i.e. through quasar absorption lines, may not be giving us the full picture. Specifically, in this talk, I will focus on our attempts to quantify whether dust bias in absorption system surveys has been hiding a previously undetected metal-rich population of galaxies from previous studies. I will also discuss recent work, which investigates how the metallicity of a galaxy as measured in absorption compares with the abundance determined from its emission line properties.