| Where | Online: https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_peter_fisher/ |
| When | October 24, 2022 @6:00PM ET |
| Organization/Sponsor | Harvard Division of Science, Harvard Library, and Harvard Book Store |
| Speaker(s) | Peter Fisher (MIT), Melissa Franklin (Harvard) |
| Cost | free |
| Contact Info | science_lectures@fas.harvard.edu |
Astronomical observations have confirmed dark matter’s existence, but what exactly is dark matter? In What Is Dark Matter?, particle physicist Peter Fisher introduces readers to one of the most intriguing frontiers of physics. We cannot actually see dark matter, a mysterious, nonluminous form of matter that is believed to account for about 27 percent of the mass-energy balance in the universe. But we know dark matter is present by observing its ghostly gravitational effects on the behavior and evolution of galaxies. Fisher brings readers quickly up to speed regarding the current state of the dark matter problem, offering relevant historical context as well as a close look at the cutting-edge research focused on revealing dark matter’s true nature.
Could dark matter be a new type of particle―an axion or a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP)―or something else? What have physicists ruled out so far―and why? What experimental searches are now underway and planned for the near future, in hopes of detecting dark matter on Earth or in space? Fisher explores these questions and more, illuminating what is known and unknown, and what a triumph it will be when scientists discover dark matter’s identity at last.
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Peter Fisher is the Thomas A. Frank (1977) Professor of Physics and currently serves as Head of the Office of Research Computing and Data at MIT. Fisher is a founder of WiTricity, a startup developing wireless energy transmission for commercial use. Fisher serves as a referee for several journals as well as Editor for the International Journal of Physics and Modern Physics Letters. He carried out one of the first dark matter searches and since then has searched for dark matter on Earth and in space, including inventing a new kind of detector, the Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber.
Melissa Franklin is an experimental particle physicist who studies proton-proton collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Professor Franklin, born and raised in Canada, received her B.Sc. from the University of Toronto and her Doctorate from Stanford University. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaigh, and was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard, before joining the Harvard faculty in 1989.
For more information and videos of Harvard Science Book Talks, see https://science.fas.harvard.edu/book-talks.
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