The Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos, of the Organismo Autónomo de Museos y Centros of the Cabildo de Tenerife Tenerife, will host the premiere of the new cycle of scientific dissemination entitled "From the Sky to the Thesis" next Thursday, July 24th, at 16:30 p.m. This initiative is organized in collaboration with the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The cycle, promoted by doctoral students at the IAC, aims to bring the main research topics in astrophysics closer to the public, narrated in first person by those who are working on them.
The monthly sessions will be held in the Museum's Auditorium and will consist of two short presentations by young researchers from the IAC. Admission is free until the hall is full.
This inaugural session will feature the lectures "Dark matter: the mystery that sustains the Universe", by José María Arroyo Polonio, and "From dust to the colossus: how the largest galaxy in the Universe was born", by Carlos Marrero de la Rosa.
Hunting the invisible: dark matter
José María Arroyo Polonio, a predoctoral researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), will open the series with a talk on one of the great mysteries of modern physics: dark matter. Although it cannot be seen, its influence is crucial to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies and necessary for explaining the apparently capricious motion of stars and their dynamical analysis in dwarf galaxies. The talk will explain how astronomical research studies this invisible substance through the motion of stars and the analysis of their dynamics in dwarf galaxies. He will also address how his research helps us to better understand the current universe, and why this knowledge is relevant outside the narrow scientific field.
José María Arroyo studied Physics at the University of Granada and earned a Master's degree in Astrophysics from the University of La Laguna. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis on dark matter halos in dwarf galaxies, in collaboration with institutions such as the University of Bologna, where he has developed dynamical modelling tools to characterise this mysterious component of the cosmos.
From the origin of the Universe to cosmic giants
In the following presentation, Carlos Marrero de la Rosa, a predoctoral researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), will continue with a talk that invites us to travel back in time, from the earliest moments of the Universe to the formation of one of the most gigantic structures we know. From the tiny irregularities present in the early Universe, the first accumulations of matter were formed, giving rise to the formation of galaxies.
The talk will follow the progressive growth of structures in the universe: from gas that clumps together, cools, and forms stars, to galaxies that merge and evolve over billions of years. All of this will lead us to IC1101, one of the largest known galaxies, located at the heart of a cluster. Through images, simulations, and familiar language, we will discover how these cosmic giants emerge, and what role phenomena such as galactic mergers and dark matter play in their evolution.
Carlos Marrero holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics and a Master's degree in Astrophysics at the University of La Laguna. He has worked on adaptive optics, Bayesian statistics, and the analysis of low-surface-brightness galaxies. He is currently working on his thesis on the formation and evolution of bulbless galaxies as part of the BEARD collaboration. In 2024, he completed a research stay at the Capodimonte Observatory (INAF, Naples).
