The next meeting of the Chicago Astronomical Society will be on
Saturday, August 2, 2025
at the
Cernan Earth and Space Center.
Meeting Agenda:
5:15 PM -- Astro-talk over pizza and soft drinks. (Donations are welcome to offset the cost of food and beverage.)
6:00 PM -- The LECTURE will begin
8:00 PM -- Telescope viewing of the First Quarter Moon, and anything else that drifts by...(weather permitting)
Speaker: Dylan J Temples of Fermilab
Topic: The Cosmos in the Lab: Exploring the Dark Matter Mass Scale with Direct Detection
About the Presentation:
While the astrophysical and cosmological evidence supporting the existence of a
gravitationally-active dark matter is overwhelming, no signals unambiguously attributable to it
have yet been observed in laboratory experiments. The prevailing hypothesis is that the dark
matter is comprised of a new fundamental particle not found in the Standard Model of Particle
Physics. In that framework, the possible mass of the dark matter particle ranges over 50 orders
of magnitude, posing a challenging and exciting landscape for detection. In this talk, I will briefly
review the evidence supporting dark matter and the properties which a fundamental particle
must satisfy to be dark matter. From there, I will discuss the signatures of dark matter models
across the range of allowed masses and the detector technologies used to investigate them.
Finally, I will provide some outlook on dark matter searches in the future from the viewpoint of
an experimentalist.
About our Speaker:
Dylan J Temples is a Lederman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory. Dr Temples' primary research interest is in developing detectors for the direct
detection of dark matter. He works both with the NQI Quantum Science Center, on developing
superconducting quantum sensors, and on the MAGIS-100 experiment, advancing the state of
the art in long-baseline atom interferometry. In 2021, Dr Temples received his PhD in Physics &
Astronomy from Northwestern University, having previously received his BS degree in
Astrophysics from Drexel University in 2015.
Fermilab's Lederman Fellows drive quantum research to discover dark matter and inspire the next generation of scientists.
For more information about Dr. Temples' work, please refer to the Fermilab feature article below. Lederman News
Looking Ahead:
Important!
Elections will be held at our September meeting. If you like the CAS and its
objectives, please consider running for a board position. The CAS needs your participation!
The September meeting of the Chicago Astronomical Society (CAS) will be on
Saturday, September 6, 2025
at the Cernan Earth and Space Center.
Event Calendar
Membership --- If you enjoy the activities of the CAS, please become a member.
Regular membership is only $30 for an individual and $50 for a family membership.
We now accept payment via Zelle.
Join Us!
We would like to thank the Cernan Center and its director Kris McCall for their support of the CAS and astronomy/science education. We encourage CAS members and all others who support science education to purchase memberships for the Cernan Center.
We would also like to thank our members for their past and continued support.
