Dark Matter Day 2021

This year, we celebrate Dark Matter Day next Thursday, October 28 with a disseminative round table around this mysterious gravitational phenomenon. In this event, several experts will discuss what knowledge we have about dark matter and the latests results obtained around it from different perspectives and areas.

Here are the invited speakers that will participate in this activity:

• Héctor Gil-Marín (ICCUB): He is a "La Caixa" postdoc researcher at our Institute and he is part of the Cosmology research group. His work focuses on the analysis of the effect of dark matter and dark energy in the large-scale galaxy distribution by using the data of the cartography projects BOSS, eBOSS and DESI. In particular, he studies the effect of dark matter and dark energy in the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and in the distorsions in the redshift space (RSD), both of which are indirect evidences of the presence of dark matter and dark energy in the Universe.
• Andreu Font (IFAE): He is an observational cosmologist at the IFAE and he is the leader of one of the research groups of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). DESI allows us to study the distribution of matter (both dark and baryonic) in the Universe to confirm or rule out dark matter models.
• Diego Blas (UAB-IFAE): He is a researcher at the physics department at the UAB and at the IFAE. His research interests include the detection of dark matter through its effects on astrophysical systems (such as pulsars) and to answer the question of how the different dark matter models leave a trace in the cosmological observables as well as the possible detection of dark matter in state-of-the-art precision experiments (in particular, quantum detectors).
• María Martínez (University of Zaragoza): She is a member of the ARAID foundation of the University of Zaragoza and she is also part of the Nuclear physics and Astroparticles group in the Theoretical Physics department. She is one of the PIs of the ANAIS experiment whose aim is to detect dark matter in our universe through the observation of the annual modulation of the expected interaction ratios  in a sodium iodine target.

And the moderator of the round table:

• Mercè Romero (ICCUB-IEEC): She obtained her PhD in Aerospace Science and Technology at the UPC, and she is a professor at the University of Barcelona and a researcher at the Gaia group of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences. Her research is focused on the study of the structure and the kinematics of our Galaxy and she will be the moderator of this round table.

When? Thursday, October 28 at 3 pm

Where? Sala de Graus Eduard Fontserè, Physics Faculty

No prior registration is necessary to attend.

Throughout the month of October, the world will celebrate the historic hunt for the unseen—something that scientists refer to as dark matter.

Since 2017, more than 159 global, regional, and local events have been held on and around October 31 by institutions and individuals looking to engage the public in discussions about what we already know about dark matter and the many present as well as planned experiments seeking to solve its mysteries.