What does the universe consist of? 1/2

In our series "In Conversation" we hear from Prof Michael Klasen, who teaches in the department of theoretical astroparticle physics at the University of Münster. At the turn of the year he was a guest at UNSW for 4 months to participate in a week-long conference with colleagues from all over the world, to give a few guest lectures and to discuss the latest state of research, which also led to a future joint project.

Ein Bild von der besprochenen Milleniumsimulation - ein Galaxiencluster Credit: Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik

Prof Michael Klasen Astroteilchenphysiker

Astroparticle physics is about the questions: where do we come from, what is the universe made of, how did it come into being, how can we explore this with scientific methods?

With these fundamental questions we come to the border of philosophy and science and also to the idea of beauty, and these connections are what he is particularly interested in. In our conversation, he explains not only what dark matter and dark energy are, but also the basics of astroparticle physics, how we understand the universe so far, what research results there are already and how it could go on. And he explaines these difficult topics so clearly that we can all understand it.