Mapping the Heavens to Understand Dark Matter and Black Holes

From time immemorial humans have been charting the night sky to make sense of the cosmos—from the mapping of stars for navigation to today’s digital surveys of galaxies to understand dark matter. In this 60-minute-long presentation Dr. Priya Natarajan, author of the book “Mapping the Heavens,” recounts the evolution of celestial map-making and shows how maps literally track our ever evolving cosmic view. In particular, she discusses recent developments in our understanding of two invisible entities: dark matter and black holes. Dr. Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale University, interested in cosmology, gravitational lensing and black hole physics. Her research focuses on making dark matter maps of clusters of galaxies, the largest known repositories of dark matter.