Marcela Carena: The Invisible Universe

Most of the Universe is invisible. In fact, normal matter- the building blocks that make up stars and planets and you and your bicycle is the anomaly, making up only 5% of all the stuff in the universe. So why are we here? Why isn't the Universe entirely invisible? On September 16, Prof. Marcela Carena, Executive Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, invites listeners on a tour of the invisible universe and traces how an energy field known as the Higgs "turned on" after the Big Bang to give elementary particles like quarks and electrons the mass necessary to form nuclei and atoms. Carena will discuss how dark matter, an invisible mass spread throughout the Universe, created the cosmic scaffolding that allowed galaxies to form. Finally, Carena will explore ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, and how new research may reveal connections between the activation of the Higgs field and the imbalance of matter and antimatter that allowed the matter we know and love to exist.

Prof. Carena is a renowned particle physicist who has advanced our understanding of fundamental mysteries of science related to sourcing the mass of the fundamental particles in nature, the origin of matter in the universe and the nature of dark matter. Her most recent research program explores particle physics and quantum information to tackle problems of quantum theory in the early universe.