Ben Moore is an English

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the he ...

, author, musician, and director of the Center for Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology at the

University of Zürich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 ...

. His research is focussed on

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosophe ...

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the str ...

astroparticle physics Astroparticle physics, also called particle astrophysics, is a branch of particle physics that studies elementary particles of astronomical origin and their relation to astrophysics and cosmology. It is a relatively new field of research emerging ...

, and

planet formation The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System (as well as other planetary systems). It suggests the Solar System is formed from gas and dust orbiting t ...

. He has authored in excess of 200 scientific papers on the origin of planets and galaxies, as well as dark matter and dark energy. In his research, he simulates the universe using custom-built supercomputers.

Biography

Moore gained his PhD from Durham University in 1991, and then spent several years as a research associate at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and at the

University of Washington, Seattle The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle ...

Research

Moore and collaborators identified the

cuspy halo problem The cuspy halo problem (also known as the core-cusp problem) refers to a discrepancy between the inferred dark matter density profiles of low-mass galaxies and the density profiles predicted by cosmological N-body simulations. Nearly all simulation ...

and

dwarf galaxy problem The dwarf galaxy problem, also known as the missing satellites problem, arises from a mismatch between observed dwarf galaxy numbers and collisionless numerical cosmological simulations that predict the evolution of the distribution of matter ...

that persist in the

cold dark matter In cosmology and physics, cold dark matter (CDM) is a hypothetical type of dark matter. According to the current standard model of cosmology, Lambda-CDM model, approximately 27% of the universe is dark matter and 68% is dark energy, with only a sm ...

paradigm. He also formulated a new mechanism for the origin of dwarf galaxies in clusters named galaxy harassment. Using numerical simulations he determined that Earth-Moon planetary systems are not rare. Moore and collaborators predicted that the first structures to form in the Universe were Earth-sized dark matter haloes which collapsed just 20 million years after the Big Bang.

Books

He has written popular science books for adults and children, including: * "Sternenstaub. Die Geschichte des Universums in 42 nie verliehenen Nobelpreisen" * "Moon: Past, Present & Future" * "Mond - eine Biografie" * "Gibt es auf der dunklen Seite vom Mond Aliens?" * "Elefanten im All" * "Elephants in Space - The Past, the Present and Future of Life and the Universe" * "Da draussen – Leben auf unserem Planeten und anderswo" (Out there, life on our planets and elsewhere) was also translated from German into Dutch ('Hallo daar! De zoektocht naar leven elders in het universum').

Music

Under his artist name ‘Professor Moore’, he creates

electro-rock Electronic rock is a music genre that involves a combination of rock music and electronic music, featuring instruments typically found within both genres. It originates from the late 1960s, when rock bands began incorporating electronic instrume ...

music. He plays the guitar with the electro-rock band Milk67 and featured together with them in a float at the 2010 Zurich Street Parade. In 2014 he released a solo album called "Escape Velocity".

Selected publications

* * * * * * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, Ben Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Academic staff of the University of Zurich British astrophysicists English expatriates in Switzerland Alumni of Durham University