Research centres, planetariums and science museums from all over the world come together to celebrate the Dark Matter Day on Halloween night for the second year in a row. The IFIC joins this celebration with the premiere of the documentary ‘Phantom of the Universe’ in Madrid, Tenerife, and Castellón planetariums, and the Hemisfèric of Valencia. There will be lectures on dark matter to present each event.
The international initiative aims to consider one of the most important research field in today’s Physics: dark matter study, new type of matter that makes up 25% of the universe, but whose nature remains being a mystery.
Dark Matter Day is an initiative launched by particle physics laboratories around the world through the Interactions network for the second year in a row. Events are celebrated in European countries, USA, Canada, and India. As last year, The Institute for Corpuscular Physics, Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa of the Universitat de València, and the CSIC organise a series of activities in Spanish planetariums, which consist of the premiere of the documentary ‘Phantom of the Universe’ and specialists’ dissemination lectures on dark matter.
The programme begins on October 29 in the Hemisfèric of Valencia with a lecture of Sergio Palomares, IFIC’S researcher. On October 31, Halloween night, a free admission documentary screening and an introductory lecture of Juan de Dios Zornoza (IFIC) will be held in the planetarium of Castellón. On Friday, November 2, the planetarium of Tenerife will screen the documentary together with a lecture of Héctor Socas Navarro (Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands, ISC). On December 11, the planetarium of Madrid will close the series with a lecture of José Luis Crespo, physicist and YouTuber with this YouTube channel Quantum Fracture.)
‘Phantom of the Universe’ is an international production involving some of the world's leading laboratories such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) o CERN, whose Media Lab produced the amazing animations that appear in the film. This production was made in the IFIC itself, which made the Spanish version. Sound effects are in charge of Skywalker Sound, also responsible for sound effects in Star Wars saga.
‘Phantom of the Universe’ proposes a tour through the history of dark matter. Starting with Fritz Zwicky, who pose the matter existence in 1933 to explain the speed of rotation of galaxies in cumulus (according to his interpretation, there must be some kind of non-visible matter that accelerates that movement, so he called it “dark matter”). Going then to Vera Rubin, who obtained in 1970 the solid evidence of the existence of this new type of matter through his studies on the Andromeda galaxy. Finally arriving at the current experiments attempting to create dark matter particles in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN or capture some dark matter particles in the cosmos.
More information and programme:
Valencia: Monday October 29 at 7.00 PM in the Hemisfèric. Lecture of Sergio Palomares (IFIC). Reservations via website http://ir.uv.es/ls00ohE
Castellón: Wednesday October 31 at 6.00 PM in the Planetarium of Castellón. Lecture of Juan de Dios Zornoza (IFIC)
Tenerife: Friday November 2 at 7.00 PM (GMT) in the planetarium of Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos. Lecture of Héctor Socas Navarro (IAC)
Madrid: Tuesday December 11 (time to be set) in the Planetario de Madrid. Lecture of José Luis Crespo (Quantum Fracture). https://www.darkmatterday.com
