This week we look to the night skies with Theoretical Astronomer Ben Bromley. Ben is a professor at the University of Utah working in theoretical and computational astrophysics, with focus on planet formation, galactic dynamics, as well as some relativistic astrophysics Today we discuss the unknown aspects of our universe including our local solar system, dark matter, and dark energy.

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Program Notes:

0:00 Intro and background

2:00 Ben begins about 100 years ago - What did we know?

What are the fuzz balls ? Galaxies are getting further & further apart. We live in a sea of galaxies which is expanding in space and time. What?

Big Bang.

12:00 Three Pillars of Cosmology 

18:00 More on the hot big bang

25:00 Fritz Zwicky - Dark Matter

34:00 The Bullet Cluster

38:00 Dark Energy

47:00 We don’t know, what we don’t know.

References:

Ben Bromley - https://faculty.utah.edu/u0095165-Ben_Bromley/hm/index.hml

Hubble - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope

Margaret Geller - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Geller

Large Scale Structures - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Large-scale_structure

Fritz Zwicky - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky

Vera Rubin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Rubin

Bullet Cluster - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster

Dark Energy - https://earthsky.org/space/definition-what-is-dark-energy#:~:text=Dark%20energy%20is%20the%20name,learned%20the%20universe%20is%20expanding.

NASA Imiges - https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html

Nasa’s Cassini Mission (Images) - https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/images/index.html

Pluto Charon Binary - https://www.space.com/32032-charon.html

Dark Energy Survey - https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/the-des-project/overview/