What is this place?

We don’t understand 95% of the universe. True story.

To explain our observations of the universe, cosmologists require it to be mostly composed of dark energy and dark matter, collectively called the “dark sector”. These names mostly serve just to quantify our ignorance.

See here for a little extra background information on the dark sector.

I’m a cosmologist working in this field, both on the dark sector and on possible alternatives to it (such as modified gravity). As such, I will use this blog to report directly from the frontiers of cosmology, highlighting key discoveries, changes and developments in our understanding of the dark sector (and probably some wider cosmological topics too).

This is your chance to see science in action, and see how our understanding of the universe develops in real time, in a field that looks set to move quite rapidly over the next few years.

The majority of cosmological (and many other fields) publications are posted by their authors on a website called the arXiv, allowing anyone to see the work being done in this subject for free. Of course, sometimes these papers can be very difficult to read, even for other scientists, but I think the chance for anyone to be able to see and read for themselves the actual publications that scientists make, is an opportunity not to be sniffed at.

I will use recent articles on the arXiv to inspire my blog articles, and include the relevant links so that anyone can have a look themselves at the primary research I am writing about. Hopefully this will go a small way to demystifying science itself and the process of doing it.

As well as these longer posts, I will post weekly factoids called WIMPs (click HERE to learn more).

Comments, and particularly questions, are welcomed as long as they are polite, relevant and appropriate. I will remove any posts that I deem to break these rules. Let’s all be reasonable and have a great dialogue together 🙂

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    February 26, 2024 by

    I bet you think you are a critical thinker? Have a look at the clip below, which caught my eye. Note: this clip happens to target Trump supporters, and is obviously interested in sensationalism. It is not interested in being fair or kind, or in reaching across divides or fighting polarisation, so I do not… Read more

  • Dark matter, dark matter, wherefore art thou dark matter?

    July 21, 2023 by

    What is dark matter? In the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see… Read more

  • New year, new uniVerse

    January 2, 2021 by

    The Earth has again returned to its nominal start point in its yearly orbit around the Sun. So, happy new year all! I am afraid that my blog posts have tailed off due to the number of research projects competing for my attention; whilst I enjoy writing the blog posts, they do have significant cost,… Read more

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