AAO Colloquium


Thursday, 10 March 2011

AAO Conference Room 4:00 PM

Mapping the Dark Matter in the Local Universe

Jeremy Mould,   Swinburne

Conventional wisdom is that the distribution of dark matter in the Universe follows the distribution of galaxies. Indeed, the detailed models of the evolution of structure, such as the Millennium Simulation, embody that assumption. However, an observational test of the assumption is possible and is potentially very informative about the nature of dark matter. In this talk I'll describe how measurement of galaxy distances allows the non-Hubble-expansion velocities of galaxies to be determined, and how these data can be integrated to provide a map of the dark matter on 100 Mpc scales. Both current projects (using the 6dF galaxy redshift survey) and future projects using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (due to operate in 2013) will be described.The latter project is being conducted within the CAASTRO dark universe theme and will involve Skymapper galaxy magnitudes.