11:00 am
In-Person and Virtual Kersten Physics Teaching Center, Room 106
Join us for a free public lecture series celebrating 50 Years of Discovery at the Enrico Fermi Institute of UChicago. Attendees can join in person or virtually.
Prof. Luca Grandi presents: The 85% We Cannot See: The Long, Tireless Quest for Dark Matter
For the past half-century, modern astrophysics has faced a profound and humbling truth: most of the matter in the universe is completely invisible. While the stars, planets, and everything we can see account for just a tiny fraction of the cosmos, an elusive substance known as dark matter holds galaxies together. But what exactly is it?
In this public colloquium, we will journey through 50 years of cosmic mapping and laboratory searches, charting how a bizarre astronomical puzzle transformed into a high-stakes quest in particle physics. We will explore how the effort to explain these vast cosmic structures led to the hypothesis of an undiscovered subatomic particle, and the ingenious ways scientists have tried to “see” the unseeable, with a journey through frontline experiments and a special nod to those spearheaded by researchers at the Enrico Fermi Institute. Pushing the boundaries of human technology over the decades, these ultra-sensitive detectors have evolved to catch the faintest whisper of this elusive substance. While a definitive answer has yet to be found, here we will review how these decades of quiet data have successfully narrowed the hiding places for dark matter, and why the quest to illuminate the dark side of the cosmos remains one of the most thrilling adventures in physics today.