Lina Necib is on the hunt for dark matter. And she or he’s using all of the instruments within the physicist’s toolkit, plus just a few others — even once they require studying a wholly new talent set.
An assistant professor at MIT, Necib, 33, describes herself as an astroparticle physicist. “I’ve a Ph.D. in particle physics, however throughout my postdoc, I slowly switched to astrophysics,” she explains. “I believed these two communities actually wanted to speak to one another a bit of bit extra. We’re all attempting to reply the identical query: What’s dark matter?”
That’s the defining thriller for this technology of elementary physicists, says Jesse Thaler, a theoretical particle physicist at MIT and Necib’s Ph.D. supervisor. To reply it, Necib makes use of a synthesis of instruments and approaches in her work.
For instance, the Gaia mission, a space observatory launched in 2013 by the European Area Company to chart a 3D map of Milky Way stars, is offering unprecedented datasets for analyzing our galaxy’s objects. Necib describes Gaia’s telescope because the world’s “costliest speedgun, as a result of it measures the speed of 1.8 billion stars within the galaxy.” To course of this large quantity of information, she employs a relatively new software: machine studying.
Necib additionally makes use of current advances in simulations. “We are able to construct simulations [that start] just a few billion years in the past, and allow them to run all the way in which to at this time,” she explains. This enables researchers to simulate galaxies very just like the Milky Way, monitoring each their stars and dark matter.
Necib’s multidisciplinary strategy is in step with her “question-driven” persona, says Thaler. For Necib, “the instruments comply with the questions,” he says. “This sort of synthesis is important on this space.” And Necib is dedicated to coaching the subsequent technology of out-of-the-box thinkers in these instruments — for instance, by working hackathons to show different researchers make one of the best use of the Gaia information.
As Thaler places, it, “Wherever the thriller of dark matter goes, she’ll be there.”
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