Revealing Dark Matter with Strong Gravitational Lensing

The overwhelming majority of matter in our Universe is believed to be an unknown new ‘dark’ particle that exists outside the standard model of physics and does not interact with light. An important goal of modern physics is to understand what this particle is. Dr. Nierenberg will provide an overview of the observational evidence for the existence of dark matter, introduce strong gravitational lensing - where space-time is bent by massive objects - and conclude by explaining how we are using this phenomenon to gain new insights into the nature of dark matter with the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Keck Observatories.

Speaker: Anna Nierenberg, UC Merced