Jayant Murthy

Jayant Murthy addressing an audience of students on the future of space travel (2019)

Jayant Murthy is an international authority in ultraviolet background radiation and Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, India. He visited Towson in the fall of 2022 with the support of a Fundamental Physics Innovation award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (administered by the American Physical Society). Our goal, working with Richard Henry at Johns Hopkins University, is to investigate whether there is a connection between anomalously high levels of ultraviolet background light recently detected by the orbiting GALEX telescope and the unknown dark matter that is widely believed to pervade the Milky Way. In particular, we aim to determine whether a conclusive answer to this question may be obtained using data from the ALICE spectrometer aboard the New Horizons spacecraft.