From dark matter to Egyptian hieroglyphs, cosmologist Luna Zagorac has a universe of topics to feed her curious mind.
Luna Zagorac is a particle cosmologist who likes to work in what she calls “radically interdisciplinary ways.”
Exhibit A: One of her research projects connects cutting-edge cosmic data and software and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Exhibit B (and C and D and onward): Zagorac earned a PhD from Yale, is currently a postdoc sleuthing dark matter at Canada's Perimeter Institute, and yet she’s equally happy reading literary classics and getting nostalgic playing video games from 20 years ago. When teaching herself languages (ancient, modern and computer), she writes about science and sometimes goes roller skating.
She is currently investigating the puzzle of dark matter, largely because she does not like being in the dark about anything, especially the strange stuff that makes up most of our universe.
Check out Zagorac’s previous writing at Astrobites, and read her article exclusively for FirstPrinciples, “Physics is the Truest Form of Magic.”
FirstPrinciples: What compels you to tackle fundamental questions for which the answers are so elusive?
LZ: Maybe the answer is in the question — if the answer is so elusive, the potential answers so many, then we necessarily need a variety of approaches and ideas if we have a prayer of finding the answer, like a needle in a cosmic stack of needles. I find that liberating; the vastness of the problem almost encourages me to come up with kooky or weird solutions or simply approaches to the problem. Will all of them be correct? No, absolutely not, but there’s something to be learned from each of my projects, and you never know when and to whom it’ll be of use. It’s a real “shoot for the moon, land among the stars” approach.
FP: Why do you focus specifically on dark matter?
LZ: The trickiness of dark matter lies in the fact that we do kind of know what it is; that is to say, we have a very good model (called Cold Dark Matter, or CDM) which overall describes the universe very well. But CDM is not a great model of the universe, because at the end of the day it doesn't tell us exactly the particle that dark matter is. That bothers me!
Dark Matter makes up around 80 percent of the matter in the universe, and I’m just not content not knowing what it is!
FP: What do you find most surprising or amazing about our universe?
LZ: Ok so if a rapid period of expansion at the very beginning of our universe called cosmic inflation happened, it was likely driven by some sort of field with a corresponding particle called an inflaton. In that case, at the end of this period the inflaton would have decayed, and the energy it released would reheat the then infant universe. This would mean that there was once a particle that has gone completely extinct — a dinosaur particle! And to look for signatures of inflation, we are basically looking for its fossil in the cosmic microwave background. Whether the inflaton existed or not, I just think that idea is wildly cool!
FP: What keeps you up at night?
LZ: Overzealous LED lights! I highly recommend everybody look into DarkSky International’s Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting and think about what tiny part they can play in the protection of dark and quiet skies. Your neighbourhood insomniac astrophysicist with thank you, but so will the birds and anybody who likes to fall asleep to the stars.
FP: What discovery or advance do you hope to witness (or be part of) in your lifetime?
I would love to wake up one day to really concrete evidence that cosmic inflation happened (or a lack so profound that it’s likely it didn’t).
I think the extremely early universe is the most fascinating bit, but it’s so hard to probe; reaching some consensus with the universe on cosmic inflation would be awesome in terms of informing how we try to model the first fractions of a second of its lifetime.
Read Luna Zagorac's article for FirstPrinciples, "Physics is the truest form of magic."
