Priyamvada Natarajan

In addition to a well-funded school system, we need to encourage and exploit innovative approaches for learning outside the classroom.

As an astrophysicist, my research work involves mapping dark matter, the elusive substance that accounts for about a quarter of our universe.

All the particles that we are made of only account for about four per cent of the cosmic inventory.

Dark matter is one of the dominant constituents of the universe, which piled up in certain parts of the universe due to gravity, and in those regions, galaxies were formed. It is the unseen thing that holds the universe together.

We scientists have an obsession with unification, a grand synthesis. And dark matter is an irritating missing piece.

The early universe was a dusty place, and the UV radiation from the hot, young black holes and stars would get enshrouded by dust, re-radiated, and scattered into red wavelengths like infra-red, causing these objects to remain obscured.

Dark matter is particularly intriguing because it's some kind of particle - that's for sure.

I fell in love with the night sky when I first looked through a telescope as a young girl growing up in Delhi.

The existence of dark matter and dark energy are inferred from observations! They are not theoretical constructs. Though invisible, both reveal their presence through the effects that they exert on motions of celestial bodies and in the case of dark matter - the bending of light as well.

I am a phenomenologist - I work on developing theoretical models that are constrained by observations.

I find the world with its inequities and injustices to be messy, unfair, and complicated. The cosmos, on the other hand, is orderly and beautiful - this I find terribly alluring and captivating.

My own day-to-day observations confirm that many Americans can barely make change. At the supermarket where I buy groceries, I've watched more than one encounter at the cash register where both customer and clerk are befuddled at the prospect of double-checking the sums.

I'm an astrophysicist and a professor, so my day job involves manipulating intractable numbers that characterize our universe.

It is my idea that the public needs to be better educated about the nature of scientific inquiry and how the scientific process works. I firmly believe that this is the only effective way forward to combat the widespread distrust in facts and science.

In an era of ever-increasing globalization, what it takes to become and remain a science superpower has fundamentally changed.

Research in basic sciences now requires resources that no one country can provide.

We must face up to a difficult paradox: The U.S. can maintain a leading position in science only by giving up its desire to be number one.

Progress in science occurs in fits and starts, and paradigm shifts occur when evidence can be marshaled to support a new point of view.

Science is evidence-based and provides a continuing understanding of complex natural phenomena. Our understanding is constantly evolving and continually improving.

Evidence-based reasoning underpins all scientific thinking, and it involves testing hypotheses or theories against data. Validating a theory requires replicable measurements from independent groups with different equipment and methods of analysis. Convergence of evidence is critical to the acceptance of a scientific idea.

Scientific knowledge is, by its nature, provisional. This is due to the fact that as time goes on, with the invention of better instruments, more data and better data hone our understanding further. Social, cultural, economic, and political context are relevant to our understanding of how science works.

No one wants to walk across a crowd-sourced bridge.

Research in any domain of science today requires specialized training to build up knowledge and clinical competence. To make major breakthroughs, we need people with expertise who are engaged in sustained research over a long period of time - in a word, scientists.

Individuals reporting on their own experience with particular therapies would provide first-hand accounts that could be considered in the improvement of drug design.

We need to make sure that the Voyager probes carrying a record of human civilization speeding beyond our solar system remain an introduction to the world that sent them and not an epitaph for a civilization that caused its own ruin.