Nerd Nite North Van "Dark Matter & Exoplanets"

We're back with a new season of mind-blowing talks, awesome trivia and one of the city’s most unique 19+ nights out, where science gets social and curiosity takes the mic.

Every Nite features three 15-minute talks from scientists, experts, and curious thinkers who can explain big ideas in plain, human language. No decoder ring required. Just real knowledge, shared easily with humour and beer.

After each talk, the audience joins in a live Q&A. That’s when things heat up – questions, debates, surprising tangents and the occasional piece of scientific gear or space rock passed around the room.

Our 3 featured talks are:

"Life Outside Our Galaxy"

Dr. Michelle Kunimoto, Assistant Professor, Astrophysicist, UBC

Astronomers have invented a surprisingly large number of ways to find Exoplanets they can’t actually see. Exoplanets are planets outside of our galaxy, with their own suns. There are five main techniques, each exploiting a different physical effect that a planet has on its surroundings. Some look for missing starlight, others for stellar wobbles, timing glitches, distorted star shapes, subtle changes in brightness, or even light reflected off a planet itself. If a planet can tug, dim, bend, delay, or generally annoy its star, someone has turned that annoyance into a detection method.

Astronomers don’t discover exoplanets by spotting them head-on. They discover them when stars misbehave. This talk is about how tiny glitches in light, motion, and timing expose hidden worlds, revealing a galaxy full of planets quietly giving themselves away.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Michelle Kunimoto is an Assistant Professor at UBC in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Michelle served as a Torres Postdoctoral Fellow and as a TESS Postdoctoral Associate at MIT and was selected for Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science in 2017. Michelle has personally discovered over 3,300 planets. Yes, over half the known exoplanets (6,025 as of December 2025), have been discovered by Michelle.

“The Search for Matter That Shouldn’t Exist”

Dr. Jason Holt, Theoretical Nuclear Physicist, TRIUMF, UBC

By watching where matter fails, we learn what holds the universe together. Dark Matter tells us that most of what exists can’t be seen. The edge of matter tells us where the visible world runs out.

Some forms of matter barely interact with anything at all. This talk explores the hunt for matter that almost never shows itself - particles that pass through atoms, planets, and people without leaving a trace. They aren’t visible and they aren’t easy to detect, but they quietly shape the structure of the universe. By studying how ordinary matter responds to these ghostly interactions, physicists uncover the hidden rules that govern reality - often predicting what must exist long before experiments can confirm it.

This talk is about how physicists predict invisible matter long before anyone can measure it.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Jason Holt is a Theoretical Nuclear Physicist at TRIUMF and Adjunct faculty at McGill University. Established in 1968 at UBC, TRIUMF is Canada’s particle accelerator centre. Jason also holds degrees in Mathematics and English Literature. Jason has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and given over 150 invited talks internationally. His work has deep connections to some of the most compelling unanswered questions in beyond-standard-model physics.

Our 3rd topic will be announced soon!

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