SG Interview: Doug Welch on MACHO

By Michael on October 4, 2006 at 11:32 am | In Astrophysics, Audio Podcasts, Dark Matter |

Slackerpedia Galactica Interview: Doug Welch and the MACHO project. (MP3 audio file, 13:28, 6.2M)

MACHO, and its sequel, SuperMACHO, are projects that have directly detected dark matter. Dark matter is dark, yet we can observe it through a variety of clever techniques. One such technique involves measuring the brightness of stars and looking for the effects of gravitational microlenses — stars which get brighter for a brief time, once and only once, as the dark matter passes in front of it.

Dark matter is a funny term because it encompasses all the matter we can’t see. Dark matter is not one thing, it is all the things we can’t see but can detect due to their gravity. The dark matter detected by MACHO is likely things like planets, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs or low-mass black holes, if such things exist.

Dr. Doug Welch is one of the researchers involved with the MACHO project. In this podcast interview with Michael Koppelman, Doug talks about all things MACHO.

If you haven’t already subscribe to the podcast or just listen now.