Dark Matters Professor Joseph Silk

Event details

York Union Event

The York Union warmly invites you to attend our second external speaker event of 2019 as we welcome Professor Joseph Silk for an address titled: 'Dark Matters.'

The emergence of cosmic structure is an outcome of the Big Bang that we study by peering back through the mists of time with giant telescopes to extract knowledge about the most remote objects in the Universe. One of the greatest mysteries in the cosmos is that it is extremely dark. Not only is the night sky mostly dark, but also most of the matter in the universe is dark. For every atom visible in planets, stars and galaxies today there is about six times more matter in some invisible form. The Universe not only contains dark matter but its mass budget is dominated by even more mysterious dark energy. This is acts like antigravity, and has accelerated the rate of cosmic expansion in the recent past. Professor Silk will describe the dark side of the Universe, how we measure it, and why it matters.

Professor Silk is an astrophysicist and a leading expert on the early Universe. He is a Balzan Prize winner and one of the world’s most sought-after science communicators. He is a research scientist at the Service d’Astrophysique, CEA, Saclay and the Institut d’Astrophysique, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, Homewood Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and Senior Fellow in the Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at the Department of Physics, University of Oxford.

Professor Silk is also the Gresham Professor of Astronomy and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is one of the world’s leading researchers into theoretical cosmology, dark matter, galaxy formation and cosmic microwave background. Having delivered some of the most important invited astronomy lectures around the globe and with over 500 publications to his name, he is one of the world’s foremost science communicators. His books include: The Big Bang, Horizons of Cosmology, The Infinite Cosmos, On the Shores of the Unknown, A Short History of the Universe and Cosmic Enigmas.

The address will include a Q&A during which time audience members can pose questions to Professor Silk. Our events are as intelligent as our audience so please join us for what should be a lively and engaging evening!

Please bring your free ticket with you to the event. You cannot be guaranteed entry without your ticket and those without tickets may be allowed entry only if spaces are available.

To cover the expenses of hosting this event we suggest a small donation of £2 from students and £4 from members of the public at the door for those who are able. The York Union is a strictly not-for-profit organisation run by a small group of volunteers.