Meeting Information

Dark Matter or Gravity?

September 17, 2008
College Park, MD

Speaker: Dr. Stacy McGaugh, University of Maryland

Time/Location: The talk will start at 1:00 pm with a Q&A session to follow. It will be held in one of the first floor conference rooms at the American Center for Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD. This is located off River Road, between Kenilworth Ave. and Paint Branch Parkway. 

Abstract:  Invisible components appear to dominate the mass-energy budget of our universe.  Dark Matter is thought to be some novel form of super symmetric particle outside the standard model of particle physics.  Yet to be detected in the laboratory, these particles are inferred to outweigh normal baryonic matter by 6:1.  Dark Energy acts like anti-gravity, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.  It outweighs the mass by 3:1.  I will discuss how we come to this strange universe, and present surprising evidence favoring an alternative interpretation based on a modification of gravity. 

Biography: Dr. Stacy McGaugh received an S.B. in physics from MIT in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1992.  He held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Rutgers University before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland where he is currently an Associate Professor.