Babbage: The hunt for dark matter
Babbage from The Economist
The Economist
4.8 • 807 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dark matter is thought to make up around a quarter of the universe, but so far it has eluded detection by all scientific instruments. Scientists know it must exist because of the ways galaxies move and it also explains the large-scale structure of the modern universe. But no-one knows what dark matter actually is.
Scientists have been hunting for dark matter particles for decades, but have so far had no luck. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held recently in Denver, a new generation of researchers presented their latest tools, techniques and ideas to step up the search for this mysterious substance. Will they finally detect the undetectable?
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Don Lincoln, senior scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; Christopher Karwin, a fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Josef Aschbacher, boss of the European Space Agency; Michael Murra of Columbia University; Jodi Cooley, executive director of SNOLAB; Deborah Pinna of University of Wisconsin and CERN.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this episode of Babbage is available to listen for free, but if you want to listen every week, |
| 0:06.0 | you'll need to become an economist subscriber. For full details, click the link in the show notes, |
| 0:11.0 | or search online for Economist podcasts. My dreams, my retirement, my life. My map is a range of ready-made funds managed by BlackRock, |
| 0:23.9 | making it easier for you to invest for the future you want, whatever that looks like. |
| 0:28.4 | Our funds use ETFs and index funds to keep costs low and are actively managed, |
| 0:33.3 | meaning the funds stay within their investment risk profiles. |
| 0:36.7 | Plus, it really doesn't take much to begin investing. |
| 0:39.5 | Just get started and let the professionals do the rest. |
| 0:42.9 | My future, my way, my map. |
| 0:46.0 | Ready when you are. |
| 0:47.3 | Index to Futsi Russell. |
| 0:48.7 | Capital at risk. |
| 0:49.6 | The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise and are not guaranteed. |
| 0:54.4 | Investors may not get back the amount originally invested. |
| 0:57.5 | Diversification and asset allocation may not fully protect you from market risk. The Economist. |
| 1:18.8 | There's a mystery in the sky. |
| 1:21.8 | Most of the universe is missing. |
| 1:24.3 | The stuff that we're made of, |
| 1:26.7 | and for that matter everything else we can see on Earth and also the stars, |
| 1:28.3 | only makes up around 5% of the universe. |
| 1:32.3 | Most of the universe, around 70%, is made of something called dark energy, a substance that pushes space apart. |
| 1:41.3 | The rest, around 25%, is dark matter. Dark matter doesn't emit light, so it's impossible |
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