Katherine Freese: Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter
The Club is honored to host astrophysicist Katherine Freese come to lecture on some startling cosmic issues. She has been working to identify the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe as well as to build a successful model for the early universe immediately after the Big Bang.
The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe, from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars, constitute only 5% of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The remaining 95% is made up of a recipe of 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy, both non-luminous components whose nature remains a mystery.
Freese will recount the hunt for dark matter, from the discoveries of visionary scientists like Fritz Zwicky, the Swiss astronomer who coined the term “dark matter” in 1933, to the deluge of data today from underground laboratories, satellites in space, and the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists contend that dark matter consists of fundamental particles known as WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles. Billions of them pass through our bodies every second without us even realizing it, yet their gravitational pull is capable of whirling stars and gas at breakneck speeds around the centers of galaxies and bending light from distant bright objects. In this talk, Freese will provide an overview of this cosmic cocktail, including the evidence for the existence of dark matter in galaxies. Many cosmologists believe we are on the verge of solving this mystery and this talk will provide the foundation needed to fully fathom this epochal moment in humankind’s quest to understand the universe.
Professor Freese is author of a book The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter, published in June 2014. She is a Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan and Director of Nordita, the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Nordic Countries in Stockholm.
Host: Christine Loomis
Cost: Free for members, $15 for guests
Fees for this event will be billed to the member’s account.
Event Cancellation Policy
Free Events: Please call, email, or go online to cancel your reservation by noon on the day of the event to avoid being billed the full price of event. Members who do not cancel their reservation will be charged a $10 no-show fee for each reservation (member and guest).
Paid Events: Occasionally events are final sale or have a final sale date, so please check the full event description prior to making your reservation. If an event has no final sale date listed, please cancel two business days prior to the event to avoid being charged the full price of the event.
To cancel reservations:
Call: 212-719-0380
Email: events@columbiaclub.org
Visit: www.columbiaclub.org