#95 Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries, with Valerie Domcke

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Welcome to another installment of our LBS physics deep dive! After exploring the world of experimental physics at CERN in our first video documentary in episode 93, we’ll stay in Geneva for this one, but this time we’ll dive into theoretical physics.

We’ll explore mysterious components of the universe, like dark matter and dark energy. We’ll also see how the study of gravity intersects with the study of particle physics, especially when considering black holes and the early universe. Even crazier, we’ll see that there are actual experiments and observational projects going on to answer these fundamental questions!

Our guide for this episode is Valerie Domcke, permanent research staff member at CERN, who did her PhD in Hamburg, Germany, and postdocs in Trieste and Paris.

When she’s not trying to decipher the mysteries of the universe, Valerie can be found on boats, as she’s a big sailing fan.

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, William Benton, James Ahloy, Robin Taylor,, Chad Scherrer, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Marcin Elantkowski, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin, Philippe Labonde, Michael Hankin, Cameron Smith, Tomáš Frýda, Ryan Wesslen, Andreas Netti, Riley King, Yoshiyuki Hamajima, Sven De Maeyer, Michael DeCrescenzo, Fergal M, Mason Yahr, Naoya Kanai, Steven Rowland, Aubrey Clayton, Jeannine Sue, Omri Har Shemesh, Scott Anthony Robson, Robert Yolken, Or Duek, Pavel Dusek, Paul Cox, Andreas Kröpelin, Raphaël R, Nicolas Rode, Gabriel Stechschulte, Arkady, Kurt TeKolste, Gergely Juhasz, Marcus Nölke, Maggi Mackintosh, Grant Pezzolesi, Avram Aelony, Joshua Meehl, Javier Sabio, Kristian Higgins, Alex Jones, Gregorio Aguilar, Matt Rosinski, Bart Trudeau, Luis Fonseca, Dante Gates, Matt Niccolls and Maksim Kuznecov.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Links from the show:

• Valerie’s webpage: https://theory.cern/roster/domcke-valerie
• Valerie on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=E3g0tn4AAAAJ
• LBS #93 A CERN Odyssey, with Kevin Greiff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOaqIIEtdpI
• LBS #64, Modeling the Climate & Gravity Waves, with Laura Mansfield: https://learnbayesstats.com/episode/64-modeling-climate-gravity-waves-laura-mansfield/
• LBS Physics Playlist: https://learnbayesstats.com/physics-astrophysics/

Abstract

by Christoph Bamberg

Episode 95 is another instalment of our Deep Dive into Physics series. And this time we move away from the empirical side of this topic towards more theoretical questions. 

There is no one better for this topic than Dr. Valerie Domcke. Valerie is the second researcher from the CERN we have on our show. She is located at the Department of Theoretical Physics there.

We mainly focus on the Standard Model of Physics, where it fails to explain observations, what proposals are discussed to update or replace it and what kind of evidence would be needed to make such a decision.

Valerie is particularly interested in situations in which the Standard Model brakes down, such as when trying to explain the excess gravitational pull observed that cannot be accounted for by visible stars. 

Of course, we cover fascinating topics like dark matter, dark energy, black holes and gravitational waves that are places to look for evidence against the Standard Model.

Looking more at the practical side of things, we discuss the challenges in disentangling signal from noise, especially in such complex fields as astro- and quantum-physics. 

We also touch upon the challenges Valerie is currently tackling in working on a new observatory for gravitational waves, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, LISA. 

Transcript

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