Fighting Fire with Water: Shedding Light on the Dark Matter

Zack Carter (University of Utah / NASA Intern)

The cosmos’s visual wonders have stoked the curiosity and awe of humankind since time immemorial. However, these wonders constitute only a minority of matter in the Universe, with the majority being invisible or “dark”. In this talk, I endeavor to give an overview of the discovery of this “dark matter”, the progress made thus far in uncovering its identity, and the current strategies being enacted in pursuit of that goal, with special attention given to probing dark matter via examination of its potential visible (ironically enough) signatures.