SPACE Colloquium: Fabio Iocco - "How much milk in the sky? The mass distribution of the Milky Way"
Accademia Pontaniana
Abstract. The Milky Way crowns the night sky of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres with majestic splendor. While its beauty has inspired humanity for millennia, modern observations — especially over the past few decades — have enabled us to determine its stellar and dynamical mass with remarkable precision. The wealth of knowledge provided by recent technological advances is, however, affected by inherent observational uncertainties. These still partially limit our ability to probe physics beyond the Standard Model in this era of precision measurements. In this Colloquium, I will review recent observations and analyses aimed at determining the mass of the Milky Way and the distribution of dark matter within it. I will also discuss how these determinations — and the uncertainties associated with them — impact the search for new physics in selected dark matter scenarios.
Bio. Fabio Iocco completes his PhD between Stanford University and UniNA "Federico II" in 2007. He works as research fellow at Arcetri Observatory Florence, CEA & IAP Paris, OKC Stockholm, IFT Madrid, Imperial College London, as well as SIMONS-FAPESP Professor at ICTP-SAIFR in São Paulo. He is now Professor at Università di Napoli "Federico II".
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