- [Mila Chadayammuri] I think
I like astronomy because
it is so shamelessly about curiosity.
You don't pretend that it's useful.
You're just curious, and then you go see
how you can answer those questions.
I think it's mind-blowing that
we — pretty small creatures
on a pretty average planet
around a pretty average star
in a very average galaxy
out of hundreds of millions
of galaxies in the visible universe —
get to use our brains and
computers and telescopes
to study the deepest
mysteries of the universe.
Dark matter makes up about a fourth of
the energy budget of the universe,
and dark energy is about 70%.
And all the normal matter,
which is everything that
you're familiar with,
is just 4% of the universe.
The way that I test different
models of dark matter
and dark energy is by
taking different ideas
and then making movies
of what those ideas mean
for how the universe looks over time.
And then I work with my collaborators
who actually use telescopes to look at
the universe at different
points in its history
and essentially compare what they see
to the movies that I made.
You can know that dark
matter is there by looking
at how fast stars are moving
around the center of a galaxy
or how fast galaxies are moving around
the center of a galaxy cluster.
People get caught up in
all these bizarre notions
that are totally constructed about
what a meaningful life looks like.
No, what matters is how I
can see the world around me,
and how I can connect to it,
and how I can be amazed by it,
and how I can pursue that
amazement to its end
with no ulterior motives, right?
When you tell people you're an astronomer,
the first reaction is,
"Wow, I loved space when I was a child!"
Almost everybody says that.
And you get to be the person
who just never stopped.
