By
popular demand the
Dark Matter Awareness Week will be extended for an Extra time period
until the end of January 2011. To join the Extra time January session
click here. Dark Matter Awareness Week is envisaged as a worldwide effort for disseminating specific information about one of the most pressing problems and elusive aspects of astrophysics, high-energy physics, cosmology and relativity. During the first week of December 2010 the talk 'Dark Matter in Galaxies' will be presented at your institute by one of your colleagues. The content of the talk will be at the level of a journal club talk, and in a few cases will be at the level of a review talk. The overall purpose of this event is to increase the awareness of the phenomenology of the mass discrepancy problem in galaxies amongst the many scientists currently working with a theoretical, observational, experimental and simulation approach on issues involving dark matter or its alternatives. |
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Why an
awareness
week ?
The distribution of matter in galaxies of different
luminosities and Hubble types, as inferred from observations, plays an
important role in cosmology, extragalactic astrophysics, astroparticle
physics, as well as in a number of issues in high-energy astrophysics,
galactic astronomy, star formation and evolution and general
relativity. Notwithstanding the general successes of the LambdaCDM
scenario in explaining the structure and evolution of the universe,
there
is a growing conviction that the structural
properties of the dark and luminous components in galaxies hold
important clues about the nature of dark matter and the
processes
that are responsible for galaxy formation. This initiative aims to be
serious effort to communicate results from those scientists working in
the field of galaxy structure, to those scientists engaged with the
dark matter problem in astrophysics, astroparticle physics and
cosmology. |
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DMAW
2010
has an ambitious and specific aim. It should be emphasised
first
that the goal is neither to disseminate amongst physicists and
astrophysicists the evidence for a dark component in galaxies, nor to
overstate its scientific importance compared other cosmological and
astrophysical issues. Regular meetings, workshops and
conferences
are instituted to achieve these goals. The aim of DMAW 2010 is instead to provide scientists working in many different areas related in several different ways to dark matter, an improved knowledge of the phenomenology of its distribution in galaxies. Colleagues working in the field of galaxy structure are not the target of the DMAW 2010 initiative. Instead, we ask them to join in as protagonists, by preparing and delivering the seminars and by contributing to shaping the DMAW 2010 reference materials. |