NASA’s Plans for the Dark Universe

Speaker: Dr Jason Rhodes, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, USA.

All the material we can see is just a small fraction of the universe. The rest, a full 95 percent, is invisible and mysterious. These are the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy. While dark matter keeps things like galaxies together, dark energy acts in an opposite way – it pushes groups of galaxies apart and expands the universe itself. Dr Rhodes will present the ways in which astronomers study the dark universe and talk about two upcoming space telescopes, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Euclid Space Telescope, that plan to study the dark universe in the coming decade.

Speaker Bio:

Dr Jason Rhodes was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and only managed to remedy this when he went off to Claremont, California, for college. After getting a BS in Physics from Harvey Mudd College, he headed east for a Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton and a short stint as a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He found his way “home” to California in 2003 to work at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he studies the mysterious “dark sector” of the Universe as a Senior Research Scientist. The dark matter and dark energy that make up 95% of the Universe are poorly understood and difficult to measure, which leads to a certain amount of job security for those astrophysicists dedicated to studying them. Jason is playing a leading role in developing NASA and European Space Agency space telescopes to explore this dark sector. This leads to a lot of international travel, and Jason is lucky enough to sometimes bring along his wife Alina, a Melbourne native, fellow JPL astrophysicist, and a leading dark sector researcher in her own right. When he isn’t trying to understand the forces at play in shaping the Universe, Jason is an avid runner with an NCAA title (800 meters), several Master’s national titles (200, 400, and 800 meters), and a former Master’s World Record (4x800 meter relay) to his name. Other hobbies include playing poker (preferably with people slightly worse than he is) and trying to explain what he does for a living to his non-scientist parents.

Event Venue

Barr Smith South 3029 Flentje Lecture Theatre, North Terrace, Adelaide, Australia