Astronomy on Tap Rocket City – Dark Matter in Real Time!

Join us at Back Forty Beer Company for an exciting look at one of the universe’s biggest mysteries! Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti (University of Alabama in Huntsville) will be presenting “Dark Matter – in Real Time!” Don’t miss out on great science and beer! #DarkMatter Abstract: Invisible to telescopes, dark matter is thought to make up over 80% of all matter in the Universe but is still one of the most mysterious concepts in modern astronomy. We have begun a series of extreme-precision observing campaigns to measure the tiny accelerations of stars that live within the gravitational pull of our Galaxy. These accelerations are about 10 cm/s/decade, or about the speed of a crawling baby! Using these measurements, we can now probe the dark matter in our Galaxy with unprecedented precision, and I will discuss recent findings on a dark matter clump near our own Sun. Future measurements of dark matter clumps in our Galaxy may indeed reveal the true nature of dark matter.