Astronomy on Tap Leiden: Answering cosmological questions with simulations

Our next event will take place on Monday, March 31st at Culture Café Leidse Lente at 20:00 CEST!

Join us to discover how important cosmological questions can be answered with simulations. During this event, we are happy to host Filip Husko, who will talk about the connection between galaxies and their supermassive black holes, and Victor Moreno, who will discuss how galactic simulations can give us information about the elusive nature of dark matter.

As always, there will be fun games with which you can test your knowledge and try to win cool science prizes!

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• Filip Husko: “Black hole jets” Filip Husko is a postdoc in the galaxy formation group at Leiden Observatory. He works on understanding galaxies from a theoretical perspective, and will talk about the connection between galaxies and their supermassive black holes. These black holes spew out jets that are the most energetic and among the largest objects in the Universe. In this way, black holes can kill their host galaxies. Filip will talk about this process in detail, including showing real images and simulated videos of it happening.

• Victor Moreno: “Why size matters: using the smallest galaxies to answer the biggest questions” Everything we see around us is only 5% of what is out there in the Universe. The large majority of matter is invisible, and only detected through its gravitational influence. Despite hints of the existence of this so-called dark matter going back almost 90 years, its precise nature remains unknown and makes it one of the biggest unsolved questions in physics. Victor Moreno studied and completed his PhD in computational astrophysics in Durham (UK). He then joined Leiden Observatory where he is a postdoc within the galaxy formation group. His main research concerns the nature of dark matter and how galaxies grow, evolve, and interact with their surrounding environment. In this talk, Victor will show how by leveraging simulations of galaxy formation and observations of dwarf galaxies in the Local Universe, we can learn something about the elusive nature of dark matter.

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***Logistical information:***We start at 20:00 sharp, so please arrive earlier to enter the venue, save a seat, and grab a drink. We will be uploading a recording of the talks on ourYouTube channelafter the event.

Join us for an evening of astronomy and fun games where you can win cool science prizes! All ages and backgrounds are welcome!

For more information check out http://astronomyontap.nl/