Spotify
Scotohylology (DARK MATTER) with Flip Tanedo
Apple
Ologies with Alie Ward: Scotohylology (DARK MATTER) with Flip Tanedo on Apple Podcasts
Stitcher
Ologies with Alie Ward - Scotohylology (DARK MATTER) with Flip Tanedo on Stitcher
Notes
First, thank you to Ologies host Alie Ward for warning us fragile, mortal listeners about the existential-dread-inducing questions we’re about to explore. As she says, “It gets spooky.” Onward!
Guest: Dr. Flip Tanedo (he/him)
- Theoretical physicist and dark-matter expert (aka “Scotohylologist” as coined in this episode)
- Tenured Professor of Particle Physics at UC Riverside
- Studied mathematics and physics at Stanford and Cambridge
- Earned a PhD at Cornell
- Is a straight-up sweetheart
Some tone-setting questions:
What do you call the study of dark matter?
- Current literature says things like “dark matter cosmology” or “dark cosmology”
- Alie has brainstormed new ideas ahead of time:
- Non-baryonic hylology
- Hylology is the study of matter
- ‘Baryonic’ refers to everything made of normal atomic matter, so dark matter could be called non-baryonic
- Flip says that while theoretical dark matter might be a researcher’s main focus, they’re generally doing a lot of particle physics and looking at quantum fields
- They work on things that are essentially invisible, not necessarily dark, but we can’t make this man call himself an invisibleologist
- Flip mentions a senior theoretical physicist at UC Riverside, Ernest Ma, who once wrote a paper that included the word “scoto” — the greek word for dark!
- Alie mixes the best of both worlds and comes up with scotohylology. My inner linguist is fawning, fangirling, flipping out.