The matter may be dark, but the minds are bright at the upcoming STEAM Café in Rapid City, hosted by the South Dakota School of Mines.
Michael Dowding is the senior lecturer in the Mines physics department and will describe the theories of dark matter, what we believe it is, and how to prove it for a general audience at the event.
He said his love for abstract, conceptual sciences was born in a familiar place – science fiction.
“I grew up watching Star Trek, and that actually, I would say, tipped me over into physics," Dowding said. "I really wanted to know what was real and what was make believe and, unfortunately, now I have to go to every sci-fi movie, and I just ruin it for myself.”
As a lecturer though, he said he now has the chance to learn about the DNA of our universe.
"Whenever we do look out into the universe, there are so many things happening out there that skew the image that we’re looking at," Dowding said. "Whether it’s dark matter causing things to move faster than they should, or relativity causing space to bend and smear the images that we’re looking at.”
For Dowding, he considers the universe as a vast forest, and we’ve only just started looking at bushes.
“We’ve only got five percent of the universe known to us right now, and even though we are exponentially increasing our knowledge base, we still have 95 percent of the universe to sift through. We’re not going to run out of science to do," Dowding said. "We’re not going to run out of projects for people to build PHDs off of. This is another drop in the bucket of humanities knowledge.”
The event is October 21 at the Hay Camp Brewery.