This contribution is a historical reflection on the rise of the dark matter hypothesis. Specifically, it focusses on understanding how the problem of dark matter came to matter in the early 1970s, decades after it had been famously introduced by Fritz Zwicky (1933). What were the conditions that brought about new conclusions on the existence of dark matter in this period? I will argue that the...
The local dark matter density is required to interpret results from direct detection experiments, whether they are searching for WIMPs, sterile neutrinos, or axions. Here I give an update to our ongoing project to determine the local DM density using stellar motions and our advanced Jeans equation based analysis. This includes our recent measurement using SDSS-SEGUE G-dwarfs, and a look ahead...
An anomalous excess at energies of a few GeV is seen in the Fermi-LAT data.
Being well fit by an NFW profile and centered on the Galactic Center, this so-called Galactic Center Excess (GCE) has generated a lot of excitement over the past years due to its consistency with a dark matter origin. However, there exist viable astrophysical explanations, most notably unresolved millisecond pulsars....
