Mr. Adam Anderson, Graduate Student, MIT Kavli Institute
| Jan/28 | Tue | 02:00PM-02:30PM | 37-252 |
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Prereq: none for talk; see pre-requisites for 3:15pm tour
Instruments That Enable the Exploration of the Universe
Hunting Dark Matter
Understanding the composition and properties of the matter in the universe is one of the most basic goals of physics, yet we know scandalously little about most of the matter. A concordance of diverse evidence from astrophysics and cosmology suggests that 85% of the matter in the universe is "dark": it is non-electromagnetically interacting and fundamentally different than the familiar matter of atoms that we experience in our day-to-day life. Though the existence and astrophysical properties of dark matter are established, its particle properties are unknown. I will describe the different pieces of evidence that have led to our current understanding of dark matter, culminating in the state-of-the-art direct searches that are probing its particle properties.
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up for this talk. Please note, however, that there is a tour of the Operations Control Center for the Chandra Space Telescope from 3:15-4:15. In order to take that tour, you must attend this talk as well as the "The Cost of Cosmic Real Estate: Galaxy Evolution in Dense Environments" talk from 2:00-2:30pm. In addition, you need to sign up for the tour by Friday, January 10 by submitting your full name to meinbres@mit.edu.
Sponsor(s): Kavli Institute for Astrophysics
Contact: Debbie Meinbresse, 37-241, 617 253-1456, MEINBRES@MIT.EDU