WCA-KPL Public Talk - Gravitational Lensing: A tool to study the Universe (Jordan Ducatel)

The WCA-KPL Astronomy Talk series takes place on the last Wednesday of each month, and is jointly organized by the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics and KPL.

Four fifths of the matter in our Universe is "dark matter", a mysterious substance that is completely invisible. However, we can detect this matter using gravitational lensing -- the gravitational fields produced by dark matter can bend, distort and magnify the light produced by other objects, like a giant magnifying glass. At this month's KPL astronomy talk, Jordan Ducatel will share some of the amazing impacts dark matter has on light, and how astronomers are using this to map out the dark matter in our Universe.

Jordan Ducatel is a graduate student in the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Waterloo, who works on using gravitational lensing to measure the amount of dark matter in nearby galaxies. In particular, he studies ultra-diffuse galaxies -- extremely faint structures which contain far fewer stars than other galaxies.

Attendance is free and open to anyone, although we request that you register in advance.