Dark Matter

My internship has finally started! My mentor is Dr. Matt Bellis, a particle physicist and professor at Siena College. Dr. Bellis' research projects, which tend to be computationally intensive, include tests of the quark model, direct dark matter detection, and large-scale cosmology.

Earlier this week, I was able to attend a talk at RPI that Dr. Bellis gave on dark matter. Even though I didn't understand a lot of the equations and experiments, the talk was fascinating and piqued my curiosity about particle physics and dark matter.

I learned that dark matter is a form of matter that doesn't emit or absorb light. Dark matter consists of a large part of the total mass of the universe, but since it's not luminous (it doesn't emit any type of electromagnetic radiation), we cannot see it directly. However, we can infer that it exists from its gravitational effects on visible matter and radiation.

The existence of dark matter was first hypothesized to account for the discrepancies between the calculations of the mass of galaxies from their gravitational effects and the calculations of the mass from the luminous matter they contain. Although dark matter does not interact through electromagnetic or strong nuclear interactions, it is gravitationally interactive. 

Dr. Bellis also discussed the methods used to detect dark matter, which are classified into direct dark matter detection and indirect detection. Dark matter is widely believed to be composed of WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Direct detection experiments try to find the scattering of dark matter particles off atomic nuclei within a detector, and indirect detection experiments search for the products of WIMP annihilations.

I didn't know anything about dark matter before this talk, and even though I didn't understand most of it, the talk was still absolutely fascinating. I am looking forward to my first official meeting!