Ben McAllister (ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems / University of Western Australia) used pom poms to explain his search for dark matter at the FameLab Australia 2018 National Final.

What is the nature of dark matter that surrounds us? How might we detect it? We are surrounded by mysterious “dark” matter of unknown composition, which composes 5/6 of all matter in the universe. Consider what humanity has accomplished with the fraction of matter we understand: the impacts of discovering new matter that is 5X as abundant as regular matter are staggering, and difficult to overstate. Ben’s work aims to answer these questions.