welcome to the science for the public lecture series science for the public is an organization committed to bringing science information and issues to the general public this is our website for our program and dark energy in that structure dr van de is i korea professor at the institute of cosmos sciences at the university of barcelona spain and an adjunct professor at the university of oslo norway and this year she is a daniels fellow at the radcliffe institute for advanced studies here in cambridge massachusetts each of their day's research is concerned with the relationship between the large scale universe and fundamental physics especially the possible physics beyond the standard at all she's made important contributions in her field and particularly to developing the analytical tools that will help reveal the big mysteries of dark energy and before taking her current position at the university of barcelona she's involved in a number of major large scale survey projects and was a member of the w map team that was awarded the twenty her what she and her colleagues are discovering and perhaps scratching their heads about in an area of astronomy that is fascinating to everyone welcome dr bad day and thank you phone thank you footing for that and i will ask you establish these are big mysteries they're very attractive for everybody every like he wants to know about it there are a million seemingly answers to this but can we start with asking about matter in the universe and our illusion that what we see is all of the straightness out so what we learn directly about the universe come from the messenger and the messenger so but you know the first idea of that that it's right took all to get to be general knowledge and so on so you infer this you can't see it you can't get your hands on it do you have like what could be the possible what substance what and what is dark matter if you are right now so but so we come back to another there to be why is it so elusive what is there is there some is it doesn't work like you know radiation most of it is not visible to us in a way but we can detect it but then the next thing the juicy thing here is really the dark energy and i think is that like your big thing yourself that you're interested in that not only me  physics that you really have to believe it even if it's preposterous right completely counter intuitive of being a man i ask you another thing before you go on in there i think for most of us one of the hardest things is to understand that it is states expanding and that is celebrating yes but when we think of this we're usually given razan love to you know as a as the analogy here and the rays and spread out and that's that but that's enclosed in something and so i think one of the hardest things for us is to understand this space it is not enclosed this thing that  faster and faster and faster there is no question that that's happening correct the celebration is definite gravity as a force here i don't want to say locally but what we know to be gravity which is to pull things together at extremely large scales may operate very differently w that that right guess the most important one and now are all there's even the dark energy survey i guess now but you're involved in this please tell us if you would how does that work and i take it these are different kinds of the nation yes so the several things that you mentioned just want to underscore i think for all of us that you have multiple types of investigations surveys  that these are huge international tens of the best expertise out there naturally that just put parents still scratch your head a bit and then there are these analytical so so there is some compression going on that they may be a lot of information if they are completely in th completely this and then checking and i think the next challenge that we have to be able to meet is not to check halfway through check at the end of every yes now and so you have focused on this data in particular just in general are you pretty optimistic about how things are going in terms of these huge international projects and you've been a member of a number of them and stop are you feeling like yes we're on the right track and i kind of get on t v now that the mystery of that kind of gee would be completely so i reversed by the end of it but i'm sure that public have a real good sense we hear about the w map and all these all these huge surveys could you tell us a anyone that is of particular interest to you that you thought that you enjoy disconnection so this is all it doesn't stop people asking the question and trying to go off that is is i know that of the thing that we could be able to we would be able to test right ok how is this affecting your understanding of the universe do you expect us to have like a whole new idea universe or also the laws of nature is there do you expect anything there different  standard model is that just sort of the general mental framework at this time in physics and in terms of large scale structure studies i think it depends a little bit on your personality that are people that are a little bit more yes this minimum people except that i'm saying this because there are been many cases in many areas of science where the data is in your face people say no it can't be that way and there's a resistance but ok well then saying so that takes us to this before we leave this and go into your own personal history here i'd like to if the higgs the discovery of the higgs did this of this has that but now i'd like to know about your own history which is quite interesting i told to a lot of women from italy is there something in the water in astrophysics and mathematics which is quite rare here at least until recently how did you come to get into this field and were you just this little genius right off the bat you know so somebody when i was learning to fink i think right right i'd like to add for our listeners as well that you have twin daughters each four and that your husband who will be with us next week go to another subject somehow you two managed to raise this family as do all this incredible work and be all over the world and everything all the same time it's marvelous but i just want hard but it's cheering to know that people should not be discouraged that you can do these things you can really have a very productive career in this field and have an take a look at our web page for this event which has the link to your web page in barcelona and dr verdi thank you very much for joining