Dark Matter; The Dark Side of the Universe

The Hubble Telescope has provided spectacular images of the cosmos, but what’s out there that the space telescopes can’t pick up? We used to think that the universe was composed of the things we could see such as stars, planets, Big Macs, etc.  It turns out that that is only about 5% of everything out there. Astronomy teacher, Bob Rubock leads this exploration of the 25% of the stuff we can’t see called Dark Matter. Topics include: the fundamental building blocks of the universe; the expanding universe; space, time, and gravity; cosmology in Einstein’s universe; WIMPs and supersymmetry; and dark stars and black holes. The second course of this two part series to be offered next fall, will turn to the remaining 70%, Dark Energy.