How we could solve the dark matter mystery | Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

The universe that we know, with its luminous stars and orbiting planets, is largely made up of elements we can’t actually see -- like dark energy and dark matter -- and therefore don’t fully understand. Theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein takes us inside the search for this cosmos-shaping invisible matter and explains how, with the help of a new generation of telescopes, we could be closer to demystifying it than ever before. “The universe is more queer and fantastical than it looks to the naked eye,” she says.

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0:00.0	I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily.
0:07.3	Physicists study so much of what we can see in the universe.
0:11.2	Things like the seas, the stars, each other.
0:14.9	But what about the stuff we can't see?
0:16.9	The invisible matter.
0:18.9	Theoretical physicist Chonda Prescott Weinstein trains her questions on the
0:23.2	mostly invisible universe. In her TED 2020 talk, she shares how we can better understand it,
0:29.5	and in seeing it how we can better understand our place in the universe.
0:36.9	When we look at the night sky, we see a vast cosmos filled with stars and galaxies and dust,
0:45.3	a cosmos teeming with luminous phenomena. So we've all heard some version of that famous
0:51.3	Carl Sagan line, we are made of starstuff. And it's true, we are.
0:57.2	And that makes it easy to believe that what matters is what's visible, us, the trees, the stars,
1:04.0	because it helps us feel connected to everything that we can see.
1:09.6	Today, we know that everything visible in the universe is composed from a basic set of
1:14.0	building blocks known as elementary particles.
1:17.2	Comprehending the standard model is an enormous achievement.
1:21.8	But we are now certain that it describes very little of what's out there.
1:26.5	It turns out that most of the stuff which fills our
1:28.8	universe is completely invisible to us. In other words, visible matter, the kind we and the stars are
1:36.5	made from, the kind that radiates light, is not what's normal. And we, the luminous matter,
1:46.4	we are the cosmic weirdos.
1:53.5	So how do we know? We can see that stars and galaxies are affected by the presence of something more, something completely invisible to us. So we now know that the universe is more queer
	...

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