Nanaimo Astronomy Society’s pre-Halloween meeting for October will delve into the dark and mysterious side of our universe.
Guest speaker Guillaume Thomas, National Research Council Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics post-doctoral fellow, presents The Mystery of Dark Matter.
Thomas, who was born in France and earned his master’s and PhD at the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, is interested in the formation and dynamical evolution of spiral galaxies and in exploring alternative theories to the Lambda cold dark matter model –Lambda-ADCM – which for more than 20 years has been accepted as the standard cosmological model of a universe composed primarily of dark energy and cold dark matter.
Thomas will explain why we need dark matter and its nature according to current hypotheses.
The idea of dark matter has been around since the 1930s and has been revisited extensively by scientists over the decades as abilities to measure and observe the universe continue to improve. Observations have indicated that the mass in the directly observable of the universe behaves as if there is much more mass in the universe than what has so far been accounted for. Theoretical dark matter, which hasn’t been observed directly, is used explain the discrepancy and to account for as much as 85 per cent of the mass of the universe.
“I’m going to present one of the different observations from astrophysics that can lead us to conclude that there’s indirect proof of dark,” Thomas said. “I’m also going to speak very briefly about the nature … of dark matter and what we expect it is and what kind of different observations I made … in Canada trying to discover, directly, what is dark matter. At the end I will present some alternative theories of dark matter to be explored … There is just some trouble with the dark matter, so far, so I’m just going to present why we need dark matter, what is the limitations of our current model and what is the different ways that we can explore to try to try to modify this theory.”
Club member Bruce Goddard will also present From 80 Grit to Sawdust, the making of a homemade telescope.
The Nanaimo Astronomy Society meeting happens Thursday, Oct. 25, 7 p.m. at Beban Park social centre, Room 2.
To learn more about the meeting and the Nanaimo Astronomy Society, visit www.nanaimoastronomy.com/.
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