Watch the highlights of Dark Matter in the Pub

This year’s science outreach event “Dark Matter in the Pub” was a joint event between the Centre’s Australian National University and The University of Sydney nodes. It took place on two consecutive evenings during National Science Week in August..

Dark Matter in the Pub is an entertaining science outreach event that aims to bring together scientists and the wider community to explore the fascinating and mysterious topic of dark matter.

The first event of this series that took place in a small pub in Canberra in 2022 was a great success. This yearr the event was moved to bigger pubs hosting a larger audience,. In a series of short, interactive, and entertaining presentations, Centre scientists Ellen Sirks, Theresa Fruth, Ciaran O’Hare, Laura Manenti, Ben McAllister and Zuzana Slavkovska aimed to draw the nation’s attention towards dark matter research by presenting different aspects of their research into dark matter.

This year’s events were hosted by science communicator Phil Dooley, who added to the fun and variety of the event with live music and lyrics motivated by science. As a part of the event, a pub quiz was organised to engage the participants in the sciences, incentivised with small prizes.

There were several interactive demonstrations that directly engaged the audience with science. For example, the visitors could pretend to be massive objects in the Universe and lens the light from background galaxies resulting in all kinds of odd distortions using a gravitational lensing demo. 

Hopefully, the next Dark Matter in the Pub can involve more Centre members visiting other cities across Australia. .