AoT Groningen: Weighing dark matter in galaxies

Most of the mass in the Universe is invisible to our eyes. We call this mysterious mass dark matter since it does not emit light (and, being fair, also because we have little idea of what it is actually made of). Despite being unable to observe dark matter directly, we can infer its presence thanks to the gravitational pull it exerts on other objects we can see, such as galaxies. I will talk about the fascinating quest to weigh and understand dark matter using observations of the motion of stars and gas in nearby galaxies. Thanks to these observations, we can map the dark matter distribution and shed light on a question that has puzzled us for about a century: what is dark matter made of?