I'm Andrea Albert I'm the Marie Curie 
post-doctoral fellow at Los Alamos
National Laboratory and I study 
high-energy gamma rays coming from space.
Gamma rays are the highest-energy 
light known to man. To detect gamma rays,
we use the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov 
Observatory, or HAWC, which is located in
the mountains near Pueblo, Mexico. 
I came to Los Alamos because I wanted to
work on HAWC and dark matter and both 
the HAWC experts and also dark matter
theorist experts are here. 
Dark matter is literally holding the galaxy
together. It's holding the entire universe 
together. If you took away the dark matter
our galaxy would fall apart. 
So, we're asking this fundamental question,
“What is dark matter?”
And if it's a particle, there are good reasons 
to think when they whack into each other,
they're going to make these high-energy 
gamma rays.
So we know where there are regions of over 
densities that are somewhat nearby,
called dwarf galaxies. We can use HAWC and 
we can look in the direction of these dwarf
galaxies and say, “Do we see gamma rays 
coming from these objects?"
Because, if we did, that would be a 
smoking gun for dark matter interactions.
People haven't given very much thought to, 
I mean they've given as much thought to…
oh, I should just resay that.
