Bullet Galaxies and Dark Matter

One of the greatest accomplishments in recent astrophysics is the creation of a model for the complete inventory of the Universe. All the observational data tells us with extremely high certainty that ordinary matter (every particle ever detected by every person who ever lived) makes up only one fifth of all the matter there is. The rest goes by the popular name of dark matter. Because it is dark, dark matter has been notoriously hard to detect; it doesn't emit or reflect radiation such as light or heat, and it can have only the feeblest of interactions with itself and ordinary matter. So how do we know it is there? In this talk, I will discuss how astronomers observe the invisible matter in one of the true gems on the sky: a giant cluster of galaxies also called the Bullet Cluster.

Speaker: Marusa Bradac, UC Davis