Team Number: 010
School Name: Bosque School
Area of Science: Astrophysics
Project Title: Shining Light on Dark Matter
Project Definition:
Although scientists know it's out there and that ninety percent of the universe consists of it, dark matter still remains a mystery, unable to be directly observed without sophisticated equipment and only positionally detectable by the effect it has on galaxies and other cosmic structures. Largely known for its gravitational pull, scientists believe dark matter to be responsible for most, if not all, of the "missing mass" of the universe, as well as other unexplained cosmic phenomena, including the temperature of cosmic gases. While scientists have observed that cosmic gases are not seen to go beneath a certain temperature (approximately 1000 Kelvin), the rationale for such is a mystery, but it is suspected that dark matter interacts with the gases in such a way that the velocity of dark matter prevents the gases from cooling down any further. Our project includes modeling the interaction of Dark Matter particles in fields of cosmic gases.
Project Solution
Our project is, obviously, to model the interaction of dark matter particles flying through clouds of cosmic gas. We will do so by extending an existing program to suit our needs. Ultimately, we hope to be able to aid in understanding the nature of dark matter.
Progress to Date:
As of December 17, we have started our code, using C++ and are continuing to work daily towards the completion of this code. While our code is incomplete, we have found a code in Fortran that does basically what our code will do in the end with minor revisions and additions. This code models the interactions of any type of particles, but specifically those made of dark matter.
Progress to Come:
We still need to complete the code so that it models our problem and complete and run the simulation. We hope to be able to run the simulation by means of a cluster built specifically for this application.
Bibliography:
Dark Matter, Cosmology, and Large-Scale Structure of the Universe. 2004 <http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/dm-tutorial/dm0.html>. Peebles, P.J. E..
Dark Matter, Cosmology, and Large-Scale Structure of the Universe. 2004 <http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/dm-tutorial/dm0.html>.
White, Martin. Dark Matter. 2004 <http://astron.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/dm.html>.
Verkindt, Didier. Neutrino History. April 11, 1999. 2004 <http://wwwlapp.in2p3.fr/neutrinos/aneut.html>.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Dark matter. December 6, 2004. 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter>.
Hernquist, Lars. TPM. 2004 <http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~bode/TPM />.
Team Members
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