Rosseland Lecture 2026: The dark matter puzzle
Schedule
Fri May 08 2026 at 03:00 pm to 04:00 pm
UTC+02:00Location
UiO : Realfagsbiblioteket | Oslo, OS
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We are excited to invite everyone to our annual Rosseland Lecture!Each spring, near the date of Svein Rosseland's birthday, the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics invites everyone to a guest lecture as a remembrance for the great astrophysicist Svein Rosseland (1894-1985), founder of our institute.
**Title:** The dark matter puzzle
**Speaker:** Professor Emeritus Françoise Combes, Collège de France
**Abstract**
The problem of missing mass in the Universe, at the scale of galaxies, large-scale structures, and its global content, is a multi-faceted enigma. In the cold dark matter scenario, one of the main candidates for the exotic particles, is the neutralino, the most stable of the super-symmetric particles. However, supersymmetry does not appear as expected in the Large Hadron Collider experiments at CERN.
Many other models have blossomed in recent years, I will describe some alternatives such as axions, sterile neutrinos, or modified gravity.
Cover image: James Webb Space Telescope's image of the central galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This behemoth collection of galaxies, lying 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus (the Crane), dominates the scene. Looking more closely, this dense collection of heavy galaxies is surrounded by red streaks of light: these warped arcs are in fact faint galaxies from the Universe’s distant past. They are visible due to brightening and magnification as a result of gravitational lensing from the combined mass of the galaxy cluster. It can only be explained if the cluster is dominated by an enormous amount of invisible mass: dark matter.
Photo: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Atek, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
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This year’s Rosseland Lecture will be held by Françoise Combes, Emeritus Professor at Collège de France, chair of “Galaxies and cosmology”, and president of the French Academy of Sciences for 2025-2026.
Combes works at the Paris Observatory on the formation and evolution of galaxies, their dynamics and their co-evolution with supermassive black holes, as well as on models of dark matter.
More information can be found at this webpage: https://www.mn.uio.no/astro/english/research/news-and-events/events/guest-lectures-seminars/2026/rosseland-lecture-2026.html
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**Organizers**
Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics and The Science Library
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