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The Retinal Blind Spot in the Scientific Vision of Our Origins
Kim Griest
Dr. Griest's main interests have been the nature of the dark matter that is believed to make up most of the mass of the Universe, and particle physics beyond the standard model—especially supersymmetry, as well as the physics of the early Universe and gravitational microlensing. The dark matter could be a new elementary particle such as the lightest supersymmetric particle, or could be baryonic in the form of jupiters, brown dwarfs, or black holes. In either case experimental detection is possible, and Griest works devising detection methods and calculating detection rates. For baryonic dark matter, his collaboration has a, hopefully definitive, experiment to monitor stars for gravitational microlensing by the dark matter. Microlensing also has the promise of detecting planets around other stars. For supersymmetric dark matter, accelerator results as well as underground detectors are relevant..Program recording date & length: 2002 • 1 Hour 30 Minutes
