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All but 4 percent: Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Our story begins in 1933…. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies and Astronomer Fritz Zwicky. Slow down – You move too fast!. The Coma Cluster of Galaxies and Astronomer Fritz Zwicky. Why don’t you fly apart?.
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The Coma Cluster of Galaxies andAstronomer Fritz Zwicky Slow down – You move too fast!
The Coma Cluster of Galaxies andAstronomer Fritz Zwicky Why don’t you fly apart?
The Coma Cluster of Galaxies andAstronomer Fritz Zwicky If the Stars don’t weigh enough…
The Coma Cluster of Galaxies andAstronomer Fritz Zwicky Then something else does! Dark Matter!
40 years later, Vera Rubin shows galaxies spin too fast to hold together… Measuring spectra of galaxies to infer velocity from Doppler shifts (c. 1970) Stars and gas rotate with speed V around the center of NGC 3198 (Image from Begeman 1989)
…unless held together by dark matter! GM(r)=rVc2(r) Luminous galaxy Dark matter Embedded in cloud of dark matter Credits: Left: J. Kormendy (NGC 4216). Right: K. Begeman (NGC 3198) and K. Freeman Although diffuse, dark matter is crucial for galaxy formation
Recipe for our Universe! Photons: 0.03% Neutrinos: 0.3% Atoms: 4% Dark Matter: 23% Dark Energy: 73% Credit: NASA/GSFC
4% does not gain admission to this show!
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)
What is the dark matter? Not known elementary particles or combination thereof
Our best guess for the dark matter since 1977: A new elementary particle generically called a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP
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
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
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
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!
A Strange Universe Why are distant galaxies accelerating away from us?
How to describetheexpanding universe Galaxies rushing apart on their own Stretching of space
Imaginearepulsive forcethatgrowswith distancebetween every pair of atoms What would happen?
Co-Discoverer of Cosmic Acceleration Johns Hopkins Professor MacArthur Award Winner Adam Riess MIT SB 1992
A cancer has taken over the cellular machinery of space! Linder 2008 Scholarpedia
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.
What is the cosmic carcinogen? 2. Exotic new forms of energy, Dark Energy, behaving similarly to the quantum vacuum.
What is the cosmic carcinogen? 3. Maybe Einstein’s theory of gravity is wrong. Phillip Zukin, physics graduate student
Study the growth of cosmic structure after the big bang – gravity writes history.