Speaker
Description
Cosmological observations conclusively tell us two things about dark matter: it composes 26% of the current energy density of the Universe, and it lies beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. These inferences rely exclusively on dark matter's gravitational influence; all other efforts to detect dark matter have only constrained its interactions with the Standard Model. Fortunately, dark matter's gravitational signatures provide clues about its origins and properties. I will summarize what astrophysics has taught us about the nature of dark matter and the current status of the cold-dark-matter paradigm. I will also discuss what we can infer about the local distribution of dark matter, which is of particular importance to terrestrial dark matter experiments.
