Professor Caterina Doglioni: Ghosts in the cosmos: hunting for dark matter

What better way for the Lit & Sci to celebrate Halloween than by exploring something that really is invisible?

On Halloween night, Professor Caterina Doglioni will take us into the mysterious world of dark matter, the unseen substance that makes up about 85% of all matter in the Universe, yet neither emits nor reflects light and has so far escaped direct observation.

We know dark matter is there because of its gravitational effects, from the unexpectedly high speeds at which stars and gas move around galaxies to the way matter shapes the large-scale structure of the cosmos. But despite decades of evidence, scientists still do not know what dark matter is actually made of.

Uncovering its nature remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in modern physics.

Caterina is Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester, working in the same Department of Physics and Astronomy as Professor Brian Cox.

After completing her PhD at Oxford working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, Caterina developed a particular interest in physics beyond what we currently know, especially the physics of dark matter. Her research explores both the known and unknown constituents of matter and the extraordinary experimental and computational challenges involved in studying them.

At CERN, scientists are attempting to create dark matter under controlled conditions at the Large Hadron Collider and identify it through the subtle effects it might leave behind in particle detectors.

Caterina will introduce us to this remarkable search and explain how researchers are dealing with the enormous quantities of data produced by modern particle physics. She will also explore how advanced computational techniques and artificial intelligence are being used to search for extremely rare processes that could help reveal what dark matter really is.

Following in the footsteps of Professor Tim O’Brien of Jodrell Bank, who spoke to the Lit & Sci in 2023 and is a colleague of Caterina’s at the University of Manchester, this promises to be an accessible journey into some of the deepest questions in modern science.

What is the Universe made of? Why is so much of it invisible to us? And could we finally be getting closer to finding the answer?