Patrick Decowski and Gianfranco Bertone seminar @ Amsterdam University College

3 december 2012

Who’s in Town

On a regular basis AUC organises small-scale seminars by inviting interesting guest speakers "who are in town" for presentations and debates with members of the academic community. The seminars are organised with AUC students, as part of their extra-curricular activities. They aim to connect debates in science and society, focusing on "the big questions".

3 december 2012-18.00-20.00: Dr. Patrick Decowski and Dr. Gianfranco Bertone: Dark Matter

In the 1970s, an astronomer called Vera Rubin measured something strange: in several distant galaxies stars were moving faster than predicted. If the laws of gravity were to hold, matter should be present in the vicinity of these stars, but so far it has been been undetectable. Due to its elusive nature, scientists named this mysterious matter: ‘dark matter’. It is abundant in our universe; about 23% of the universe consists of dark matter, as opposed to only 4% regular matter. Dr. Patrick Decowski and Dr. Gianfranco Bertone, both associate professors at the UvA and part of the Gravitation Astroparticle Physics Institute
of Amsterdam (GRAPPA), will talk about their work in the field of dark matter. They will talk about ongoing and upcoming experiments, and about the prospects of uncovering the true nature of this elusive matter.

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