Speaker:

Professor Stacy McGaugh
Chair, Department of Astronomy
Director, Warner & Swasey Observatory
Case Western Reserve University
http://astroweb.case.edu/ssm/index.html

Presentation:

Divining the Difference between the Dark and the Light

Abstract:

There is ample evidence for missing mass in our universe: dark matter whose gravity is felt but which goes unseen. Despite decades of searches for well-motivated particle dark matter candidates, laboratory searches have repeatedly come up empty: the missing mass is absent without leave. I will discuss the astronomical evidence that establishes the missing mass problem, and how some of it points to a different interpretation: that we may not understand gravitation as well as we would like to think.

Bio:

Professor Stacy McGaugh is an astronomer who studies galaxies, dark matter, and theories of modified gravity. He is an expert on low surface brightness galaxies, a class of objects in which the stars are spread thin compared to bright galaxies like our own Milky Way. He demonstrated that these dim galaxies appear to be dark matter dominated, providing unique tests of theories of galaxy formation and modified gravity.

McGaugh studied at MIT, Princeton, and the University of Michigan. He is a distinguished alumnus of both Flint (MI) Northern High School and the Astronomy department of the University of Michigan. McGaugh was a research fellow at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Rutgers before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland in 1998. In 2012, he moved to Case Western Reserve University where he is currently the Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Director of the Warner and Swasey Observatory.

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