Invitation

The UC Davis Physics department warmly welcomes you to attend a public lecture by Professor Michael Witherell, the former director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab).

Title: Can we observe dark matter in the laboratory?

"With the discovery of the Higgs boson we have now seen all of the particles needed to describe the properties of normal matter. But none of these particles can explain the dark matter that we know dominates the mass in the universe. Physicists are carrying out an experimental campaign to understand the fundamental nature of dark matter and to observe it directly in the laboratory. I will describe the LUX experiment, a search for dark matter which is now operating a mile underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota."

Michael Witherell was the director of Fermilab from 1999-2005. He has had a long and distinguished career since finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1973 and led Fermilab towards many important discoveries in the field of high energy particle physics.