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Dark Matter

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance which is believed to make up most of the Universe. In 1932 the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort noticed that the speed at which galaxies moved was at odds with the amount of material they appeared to contain. He hypothesized that much of this 'missing' matter was simply invisible to telescopes. Today astronomers and particle physicists are still fascinated by the search for dark matter and the question of what it is.

With

Carolin Crawford
Public Astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge and Gresham Professor of Astronomy

Carlos Frenk
Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics and Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at the University of Durham

Anne Green
Reader in Physics at the University of Nottingham

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Available now

46 minutes

Last on

Thu 12 Mar 2015 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

Carolin Crawford at the University of Cambridge

Carlos Frenk at the University of Durham

Anne Green at the University of Nottingham

How Dark Matter Went From Crazy Idea To Bombshell Discovery

The Search for Dark Matter

Dark matter - Wikipedia

 

READING LIST:

Gianfranco Bertone, Behind the Scenes of the Universe: From the Higgs to Dark Matter (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Katherine Freese, The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter (Princeton University Press, 2014)

Iain Nicholson, Dark Side of the Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Cosmos (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)

Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Simon Mitton, Heart of Darkness: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Invisible Universe (Princeton University Press, 2013)

Robert Sanders, The Dark Matter Problem: A Historical Perspective, (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

 

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Melvyn Bragg
Interviewed Guest Carolin Crawford
Interviewed Guest Carlos Frenk
Interviewed Guest Anne Green
Producer Simon Tillotson

Broadcasts

  • Thu 12 Mar 2015 09:00
  • Thu 12 Mar 2015 21:30

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