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1 All but 4 percent: Dark Matter and Dark Energy
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2 Our story begins in 1933…
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3 The Coma Cluster of Galaxies and Astronomer Fritz Zwicky Slow down – You move too fast!
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4 The Coma Cluster of Galaxies and Astronomer Fritz Zwicky Why don’t you fly apart?
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5 The Coma Cluster of Galaxies and Astronomer Fritz Zwicky If the Stars don’t weigh enough…
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6 The Coma Cluster of Galaxies and Astronomer Fritz Zwicky Then something else does! Dark Matter!
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7 40 years later, Vera Rubin shows galaxies spin too fast to hold together… Stars and gas rotate with speed V around the center of NGC 3198 (Image from Begeman 1989) Measuring spectra of galaxies to infer velocity from Doppler shifts (c. 1970)
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8 …unless held together by dark matter! Although diffuse, dark matter is crucial for galaxy formation Credits: Left: J. Kormendy (NGC 4216). Right: K. Begeman (NGC 3198) and K. Freeman GM(r)=rV c 2 (r) Dark matter Luminous galaxy Embedded in cloud of dark matter
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9 Recipe for our Universe! Credit: NASA/GSFC Photons: 0.03% Neutrinos: 0.3% Atoms: 4% Dark Matter: 23% Dark Energy: 73%
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10 4% does not gain admission to this show!
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11 What is the dark matter?
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12 What is the dark matter? Not electrons, protons, or neutrons, even if they do not “shine” as stars (nuclear fusion in the early universe would drastically overproduce Helium)
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13 What is the dark matter? Not known elementary particles or combination thereof
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14 Our best guess for the dark matter since 1977: A new elementary particle generically called a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP
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15 How will we test this hypothesis? Produce it in high-energy particle physics collisions Simulated production of neutralino WIMP at a future International Linear Collider (c. 2025) Credit: Norman Graf, SLAC
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16 How will we test this hypothesis? Watch it annihilate with anti-matter NASA/DOE Fermi Gamma- Ray Space Telescope and other satellite and balloon experiments looking for this now! Image credit: Sky & Telescope/ Gregg Dinderman
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17 How will we test this hypothesis? When it hits us, we will know it (or will we?) Many laboratory experiments are searching for atomic recoil from WIMP collisions. Image credit: Discover/ Michael Attisha
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18 When a WIMP hits me, I’ll know it… Cryogenic Dark Matter Search detector element in deep freeze (0.1 K), ½-mile underground in Soudan, MN This experiment has not seen WIMPS yet, but has placed the best current limits on their properties if they exist. See Technology Review May/June 2009!
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19 But wait, there’s more!
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20 A Strange Universe Why are distant galaxies accelerating away from us?
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21 How to describe the expanding universe Galaxies rushing apart on their own Stretching of space
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22 Imagine a repulsive force that grows with distance between every pair of atoms What would happen?
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23 Co-Discoverer of Cosmic Acceleration Johns Hopkins Professor MacArthur Award Winner Adam Riess MIT SB 1992
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24 A cancer has taken over the cellular machinery of space! Linder 2008 Scholarpedia
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25 What is the cosmic carcinogen? 1. Einstein’s Cosmological Constant added to his theory of gravity – revoked, and… …resurrected by modern physics as quantum fluctuations of the vacuum.
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26 What is the cosmic carcinogen? 2. Exotic new forms of energy, Dark Energy, behaving similarly to the quantum vacuum.
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27 What is the cosmic carcinogen? 3. Maybe Einstein’s theory of gravity is wrong. Phillip Zukin, physics graduate student
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28 What is the cosmic carcinogen?
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29 How can we find out?
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32 Study the growth of cosmic structure after the big bang – gravity writes history.
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