Archives for October 2019

The UC Irvine Center for Cosmology is celebrating International Dark Matter Day, October 31, at the Physical Sciences Plaza in front of Reines Hall. Dark matter is 85% of the matter in the Universe, but we do not know what it is. After its initial detection 86 years ago in clusters of galaxies by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, dark matter remains one of the biggest questions in science.

Dark matter is a major focus of research of many members of the UCI Center for Cosmology. So much so that it could be thought of as a “Center for Dark Matter.” Learn about a wide cross-section of it at our Dark Matter Day event!

When: Thursday, October 31: 12 noon – 1 pm

Where: Physical Sciences Plaza in front of F. Reines Hall

Hosts: Prof. Kev Abazajian and Michael Sean Wright, with Space Chunks Live!

Guests:

• Prof. Jonathan Feng – on FASER, a UC Irvine developed dark photon (and dark matter) experiment recently commissioned at CERN in Switzerland/France. See more here.
• Prof. Daniel Whiteson – LHC experimentalist whose research includes dark matter searches at the ATLAS collider detector at CERN. Prof. Whiteson is a co-host of the Explain the Universe podcast, with Ph.D. Comics author Jorge Cham. They tackle dark matter in this podcast episode. Prof. Whiteson co-writes comics including this one explaining dark matter.
• Astrophysics Graduate Student and science communicator Sophia Gad-Nasr, working on self-interacting dark matter. Read more about self-interacting dark matter in this popular article or a more technical one at this link.
• Prof. James Bullock – Dean of the School of Physical Sciences and professor doing research in galaxy formation and dark matter’s effects on galaxies. His research includes studyin effects of complex dark matter like self-interacting dark matter on galaxy formation. See interview here on the possibilities of complex dark matter.

Bonuses:

• We will have a solar telescope so that you can see the surface of the Sun—safely!
• And you’ll get to enjoy some spooky dark matter particle themed ghost cookies, all while hearing about this wonderfully mysterious substance that permeates the Universe!

See you all there! Please share the event so no one misses out on enjoying this worldwide event at UC Irvine!

DESI’s 5,000 spectroscopic “eyes” can cover an area of sky about 38 times larger than can the full moon, as seen in this overlay of DESI’s focal plane on the night sky (top). Each robotically controlled eye can fix a fiber-optic cable on a single object to gather its light. (The red circle marks the location of a single positioner.) The gathered light collected from a small region in the Triangulum galaxy (bottom) by a single fiber-optic cable is split into a spectrum that reveals the fingerprints of the elements present in the galaxy and aids in gauging their distance. The test spectrum shown here was collected by DESI on Oct. 22. Dustin Lang, Aaron Meisner, DESI Collaboration / Imagine Sky Viewer; NASA/JPL-Caltech / UCLA; Legacy Surveys project

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument aimed its robotic array of 5,000 fiber-optic eyes at the night sky for the first time recently to capture images showing its unique view of galaxy light. Mounted on a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, DESI was designed to explore the mystery of dark energy, which is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. Implementation of the tool was long anticipated by five UCI astronomers, members of a 500-person international team responsible for the development and activation of DESI. The UCI players designed a subcomponent to monitor the varying brightness of the night sky to ensure that each image captured by the instrument is properly exposed. “This is the culmination of six years of design, research and development efforts at UCI to be ready for this moment,” said David Kirkby, UCI Professor of Physics & Astronomy. “We are all excited to start building and analyzing an unprecedented 3D map of the universe.” His UCI collaborators are graduate students Bela Abolfathi, Abby Bault, Dylan Green and Noble Kennamer. DESI’s components are designed to automatically target preselected sets of galaxies, gather their light, and then split it into narrow bands of color to precisely map galaxies’ distance from Earth and gauge how much the universe expanded as this light traveled to our planet. In ideal conditions, DESI can cycle through a new set of 5,000 galaxies every 20 minutes. The operation was the latest milestone toward the final testing of DESI and planned formal start of observations in early 2020. [UCI News]