The Dark Side of the Universe
Prof. Catherine Heymans
Just over 95% of our Universe comes in the shrouded form of dark energy and
matter that we can neither explain nor directly detect.
Together, these two dark entities play out an epic cosmic battle with the
gravity of dark matter slowly pulling structures in the Universe together,
and dark energy fueling the Universe's accelerated expansion, making it ever
harder for those structures to grow.
Catherine Heymans has used the world's best telescopes to map out the
invisible dark matter in our Universe and confront different theories on the
dark Universe.
She will explore this dark enigma and explain why she thinks in order to
truly understand the dark Universe, we will need some new physics that will
forever change our cosmic view.
Professor Catherine Heymans is a British astrophysicist and the Astronomer Royal for Scotland.
From an LDAS point of view she grew up in Hitchin and was educated at Hitchin Girls' School.
She studied physics at the University of Edinburgh followed by a DPhil at
the University of Oxford with a thesis on weak gravitational lensing and
intrinsic galaxy alignments.
She is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, Director of
the German Centre for Cosmological Lensing at Ruhr-University Bochum.
Prof Heymans was appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland, becoming the first
woman to hold the role since its establishment in 1834.
The appointment recognises her leadership in observational cosmology and
public engagement with astronomy.
Her research specialises in observational cosmology, particularly weak
gravitational lensing and mapping the "dark" components of the Universe.
She co-leads the ESO Kilo-Degree Survey, using deep imaging to test
cosmological models and probe gravity on large scales.
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