Jayant Murthy

Meeting at Towson at last, after three years of planning (September 2022)

Jayant Murthy is an international authority in ultraviolet background radiation and former director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, India. After COVID and other logistical challenges, he visited Towson in the fall of 2022 with the support of a 2019 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.