Public lecture: Brisbane
- 21 August 2023
- 6:30–8:00 pm
- Parnell Lecture Theatre 07-222, The University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD 4072
Join the National Quantum & Dark Matter Road Trip in Brisbane to how and why we hunt for dark matter with Dr Ben Roberts.
Date: Monday 21 August 2023
Time: 6:30–8:00 pm: public lecture and Q&A
Venue: Parnell Lecture Theatre 07-222, The University of Queensland, St Lucia QLD 4072
This is a FREE event, but registration is required.
Title: Enlightening the search for dark matter
The great cosmic mystery of dark matter is one of the big open questions in modern physics. According to astrophysical observations, about 85% of the matter in the Universe is dark matter. Despite this, dark matter has never been directly observed, and we have essentially no idea about its microscopic quantities. By far, most experiments searching for dark matter focus on WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), heavy weak-scale particles with masses of 10 to 1,000 times that of the proton. As WIMP searches continue to measure zero, the interest in wider range of possibilities is growing. In fact, the range of possible masses that dark matter could have spans an unimaginable 90 orders of magnitude. Most current experiments are blind to the majority of this range. Taking advantage of atomic (rather than the typical nuclear) phenomena, however, may drastically increase the range of masses we can search for. In this talk, I’ll discuss why we believe so strongly in particle dark matter, and discuss some of the work at the forefront of this search.
Speaker: Dr Ben Roberts
Ben Roberts is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Queensland. He works in atomic structure theory, with applications to probing for physics beyond the standard model, and searching for dark matter and exotic physics.
We are very grateful to The University of Queensland for their support of this event.
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