Darkness visible: charting unseen populations in the Solar System, The Milky Way, and the Universe 
8 March 2012
12:00 - 13:00
Venue: Federation of University Women’s Rooms, Old Government House
Host: The Department of Physics
Cost: Free
Contact email: physics@auckland.ac.nz
Website: Professor Charles Alcock
Department of Physics seminar by Professor Charles Alcock, Director of Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
Most of the excitement in modern astronomy and cosmology concerns the detection and characterisation of invisible or extremely faint objects.
Examples include the dark energy and dark matter in cosmology, gravitational waves, and extrasolar planets. In a more local example, most of the volume (>99.9999%) of our own Solar System is unexplored, but most likely home to vast numbers of relics from the age of planet formation.
We seek indirect evidence for these various dark systems. In this talk I will discuss generally the approaches taken, and focus in some detail on extra-solar planets and on the outer Solar System.
Seminar poster
(1.2 MB PDF)
