What a landmark result would look like

1:01:17your current work uh and where you you are in terms of your process and you look forward at the different things, all the new telescopes coming online, you know, the compute getting better, getting cheaper, well, maybe not cheaper anymore, but uh what you know, what does in your view like what would be a uh landmark result for you? Or you know, how how would you define success and and relatedly, you know, how would you characterize the implications of that? >> Oof. >> That's a big one I know. That's a that's a big one. Yeah, so I think you asked about what

1:01:57would be a landmark result and then how would I define success? >> Which are different things. >> Yeah, so I you know being a successful you can be a successful scientist without ever having like some massive impact. Obviously, it'd be nice to like, you know, be the one that discovered so-and-so dark matter particle or something like that, but you know I think it'd be nice if if uh you know, what what what would make me happy in my career is if I can advance the state of the field and help uh train younger scientists like the next generation, you know, working with uh grad students and and undergrads and teaching. I mean, that's something that I'm personally interested

1:02:38in alongside my research. >> Okay, I mean >> Obviously, I'm also interested in doing research and it would be great to if we could figure out what dark matter is. That would also be awesome. Uh and then you know, on that line of interest I'm really interested now and uh there's some theories that have very particular predictions that look very different from what our best current understanding of dark matter is. >> Mhm. >> Uh and they have some kind of smoking gun signals that if you could detect them, that would be very strong evidence in favor of this other kind of dark matter. >> Okay.

1:03:19>> So, I'm very interested in in in those kinds of theories and also just testing this fundamental prediction of cold dark matter, which is our best current theory for what it is, which is mind-blowing when you think of it, which is that every galaxy should be surrounded by an innumerable number of completely dark concentrations of matter that only interact through gravity. You know, if that's if we can demonstrate evidence of the existence of these clumps of dark matter, that would be extremely interesting and really profound uh and yeah, it would be mind-blowing, I think, right? >> I I I I am

1:03:59I cannot wait, but I I do take your your point to heart, though, which is as with many people in the sciences, uh it is a it is the journey, not the destination, and it is a community and a collective effort to better our understanding of the world around us, and just being able to participate in that process, and also pass that the the the bug of curiosity and exploration onto the next generation is exactly why we have this show, and we are able to bring on really incredible uh researchers who also happen to be friends we've been talking to for years. Uh I I Dan, I really appreciate you coming in today. We're going to have you back for part two because you just dropped a bomb there at the end that I

1:04:40want to dig into to more, and I know Chris is going to want to poke fun at you and and banter. >> Probably. >> And and banter. Um again, we had Dan Gilman in studio today, astrophysicist looking at gravitational strong gravitational lensing as a means by which to study dark matter. Um thank you for sharing your your both your intellect and as well as a little bit into a window into what is it really like for a research and how you think about this problem set. Um