Dark matter: the hidden pillar of the cosmos

Guest Speaker: Nassim Bozorgnia, University of Alberta

RASC Regular Meeting, Monday March 13, 2023

Zeidler Dome, TELUS World of Science Edmonton, 11211 142 St NW Edmonton

7:00 PM (MST), Meet and Greet

7:30 PM (MST), Meeting begins, including guest talk, AstroImaging Corner, and other RASC features.

FREE and open to the public.

This is a hybrid meeting. You may attend in person, or join remotely using Zoom.

Zoom link

Nassim Bozorgnia, University of Alberta

Dark matter: the hidden pillar of the cosmos

The Bullet Cluster. Photo Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

Our Universe is full of an invisible and mysterious substance called “dark matter”. The ordinary and visible matter, including the atoms in our bodies, planets, stars, and galaxies make up only about 15% of the total matter content of the Universe. The elusive dark matter makes up the other 85%. All evidence for dark matter comes from its gravitational interaction with ordinary matter. However, the nature and distribution of dark matter in the Universe still remain unknown. A variety of experiments are currently operating around the globe and searching for the dark matter particle, with the hope of discovering dark matter in the coming years. I will describe what we currently know about this mysterious type of matter, and how our current and future experiments and cosmological simulations will help unravel its secrets.

 

Nassim Bozorgnia is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta. She obtained her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012, and has held postdoctoral positions at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, University of Amsterdam, and Durham University. She was an assistant professor at York University from 2020 to 2022, before joining the University of Alberta. Her research is in the field of astroparticle physics and focused on the dark matter problem. More specifically, she has been developing various strategies to significantly improve our knowledge of the dark matter distribution in our Galaxy, with the aim of studying its prospects for dark matter searches. 

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