Learn about dark matter with our recent talks and interviews
Large Hadron Collider with Anthony Thomas
ABC NSW Afternoons
The movie Oppenheimer has sparked a renewed interest in the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
You may remember all the hullabaloo about the Large Hadron Collider when it was switched on in 2010, when it discovered the Higgs Boson two years later, and when it was restarted in 2015 after a two-year shutdown.
What’s it doing these days? What are the mysteries of space-time it’s resolving? What are you made of?
“Quantum mechanics is what rules the world once you look inside the proton,” Professor Thomas says.
He addresses questions about dark matter and the possible candidates for solving the mystery of its nature.
“There’s a hope that something new will be found because since the Higgs there hasn’t been any discovery of any new particle and the thing we would really love to find is a hint of what dark matter is.”
Professor Anthony Thomas AC is Australian Laureate Fellow, Elder Professor of Physics at the University of Adelaide and CDM Chief Investigator. Click on the image to listen.
The Hunt for Dark Matter in a Gold Mine in Australia - Irene Bolognino
Understanding the nature of dark matter is one of the biggest open problems in modern physics: dark matter represents about 85% of all the matter in the Universe but its makeup is still not understood. An approach to detect dark matter is to observe the annual modulation signal due to the orbital movement of the Earth around the Sun. Australia is playing a key role in detecting dark matter through annual modulation: this lecture describes the development of a leading-edge experiment which will be installed inside the first deep underground laboratory in the Southern Hemisphere, in Australia.
Speaker: Irene Bolognino is a Lecturer at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Dark Matter Particle Physics, based at The University of Adelaide. She tries to understand how the world around us is made by capturing the vibrations of dark matter. Her research interests are not limited to dark matter, but also neutrino physics, both sterile and solar neutrinos, cosmic-rays and gamma astronomy physics.
Exploring Dark Matter Detection Across Interdiciplinary Frontiers with Jayden Newstead
Jayden Newstead presents at the AIP Theoretical Physics Seminar, July 13, 2023
Dark matter is an elusive substance which, despite considerable effort, continues to evade detection. In this talk we will tour through the realms of particle, nuclear, atomic, and astro-physics, surveying the rich interdisciplinary research that propels our search for dark matter. The efforts of astrophysics and cosmology provide us with the necessary cosmic context, while the fields of nuclear and atomic physics ground us, informing and guiding the search for dark matter in the laboratory. In this seminar Jayden Newstead explores the compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter and how we can best determine its true nature.
Dark Matter in the Sky and on the Earth with Dipan Sengupta
Dipan Sengupta presents as part of the National Quantum & Dark Matter Road Trip
Dipan Sengupta provides a broad overview of the landscape surrounding the search for dark matter, and the specifics of the different ways Australian researchers are working to understand dark matter, now and into the future.
“Dark matter is a force for good, it forms stars and galaxies and it’s the reason why we exist.”
“There’s a lot that we have done and a lot that is left to do.
“Experiments have ruled out a lot … Australia has a very vibrant, growing program with a lot of students … who are looking at everything here and trying to find out its [dark matter’s] nature.”