The Absurd Search For Dark Matter

This video is sponsored by Brilliant. The first 200 people to sign up via https://brilliant.org/veritasium get 20% off a yearly subscription. Astronomers think there should be 5 times as much dark matter as ordinary matter – a shadow universe that makes up most of the mass in the universe. But after decades of trying, no experiments have found any trace of dark matter – except one.

A massive thanks to the wonderful people at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Physics https://www.centredarkmatter.org for showing us around and being on camera – Fleur Morrison, A/Prof Phillip Urquijo, Prof Elisabetta Barberio, Madeleine Zurowski and Grace Lawrence.
Thanks to Leo Fincher-Johnson and everyone at the Stawell gold mine for having us.
Massive thanks to Prof. Geraint Lewis – Geraint has been Veritasium’s go-to expert for anything astrophysics and cosmology related. Please check out his website, and buy his books, they’re great – https://www.geraintflewis.com
Thanks to Prof. Timothy Tait for the help to make sure we got the science right.

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Galaxy cluster simulation from IllustrisTNG – https://www.tng-project.org
Venn Diagram of Dark Matter from Tim Tait – https://ve42.co/venn
The Bullet Cluster Image from Magellan, Hubble and Chandra telescopes – https://ve42.co/BC2
Bullet cluster animation from Andrew Robertson / Institute for Computational Cosmology / Durham University – https://ve42.co/BC3

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Bernabei, R., Belli, P., Cappella, F., Cerulli, R., Dai, C. J., d’Angelo, A., ... & Ye, Z. P. (2008). First results from DAMA/LIBRA and the combined results with DAMA/NaI. The European Physical Journal C, 56(3), 333-355. – https://ve42.co/DAMA2008

Zwicky, F. (1933). Die rotverschiebung von extragalaktischen nebeln. Helvetica physica acta, 6, 110-127. – https://ve42.co/Zwicky1

Zwicky, F. (1937). On the Masses of Nebulae and of Clusters of Nebulae. The Astrophysical Journal, 86, 217. – https://ve42.co/Zwicky2

Rubin, V. C., & Ford Jr, W. K. (1970). Rotation of the Andromeda nebula from a spectroscopic survey of emission regions. The Astrophysical Journal, 159, 379. – https://ve42.co/Rubin1

Bosma, A., & Van der Kruit, P. C. (1979). The local mass-to-light ratio in spiral galaxies. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 79, 281-286. – https://ve42.co/Bosma1

Milgrom, M. (1983). A modification of the Newtonian dynamics as a possible alternative to the hidden mass hypothesis. The Astrophysical Journal, 270, 365-370. – https://ve42.co/mond1

Sanders, R. H., & McGaugh, S. S. (2002). Modified Newtonian dynamics as an alternative to dark matter. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 40(1), 263-317. – https://ve42.co/Mond2

M. Markevitch; A. H. Gonzalez; D. Clowe; A. Vikhlinin; L. David; W. Forman; C. Jones; S. Murray & W. Tucker (2004). "Direct constraints on the dark matter self-interaction cross-section from the merging galaxy cluster 1E0657-56". Astrophys. J. 606 (2): 819–824. – https://ve42.co/BC1

Great website about the CMB – http://background.uchicago.edu/~whu/intermediate/driving2.html

Galli, S., Iocco, F., Bertone, G., & Melchiorri, A. (2009). CMB constraints on dark matter models with large annihilation cross section. Physical Review D, 80(2), 023505. – https://ve42.co/CMB1

Antonello, M., Barberio, E., Baroncelli, T., Benziger, J., Bignell, L. J., Bolognino, I., ... & Xu, J. (2019). The SABRE project and the SABRE Proof-of-Principle. The European Physical Journal C, 79(4), 1-8. – https://ve42.co/SABRE1


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Written by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Edited by Trenton Oliver
Animation by Ivy Tello and Mike Radjabov
Filmed by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Image
B-roll supplied by Stawell Gold Mine
Music from Epidemic Sound
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Emily Zhang