00:00Chelsea Goad with space.com. We're looking at dark matter, dark energy, the search for an earth twin or Jupiter
00:07twin first. These are massive existential questions in science, but just generally for humanity. And I'm curious how you hope
00:16the general public will connect with Roman and these massive existential questions, how they will relate to it.
00:30Sure. Yeah, I think it's going to be for anybody. But I mean, I think we all want to know
00:39if we're alone. We all want to understand our place in the universe. So I'm very excited for the exoplanet
00:45capabilities from this from this mission that the wide field instruments and its micro lensing survey are going to help
00:52us understand how common earth sized planets are in that Goldilocks zone. This will be the first time we have
00:58that information.
00:59We're going to get so much closer to understanding whether we're alone. So for me, that's a that's a big
01:03motivating question. And I think it may be for some other folks, too. I'm sure others have opinions.
01:08I was pausing because I can't remember a time that I haven't been passionate to learn how the universe works.
01:16So I I can't really I struggle to to imagine how to explain that.
01:23Do you even I feel that that? Well, I can't come up with good words for that. But but I
01:31think that there's always something driving about exploring.
01:37I mean, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, I mean, whether it's you know, is there a continent
01:43on the other side of that ocean or is there what is the nature of the universe beyond the horizon
01:49that we're currently able to see or in some sense, you know, some of the same kind of questions.
01:56I think that what we're some of what we're going to do with Roman is going to be inspiring and
02:02it's going to be inspiring, not just for I hope not just for nerds, not just for scientists, but actually
02:08the
02:10you know, the country at large. And I think an important part of our job as scientists where we have
02:18like the privilege to work on something so exciting is that the onus is on us to convey what we're
02:24doing in a way that shares the excitement of what we're doing.
02:27I mean, it's something that I really passionately think that we do big ambitious things and everyone in the country
02:35should be proud of that. And everybody and you know, should feel that they're that they're that they're part of
02:40that.
02:40I realize it's not a very concrete answer. But like I said, I'm I don't represent the person who is
02:45ever not excited about how the world works. So I think just the one other thing I would throw out
02:51here is we we are we have a citizen science program at NASA as well.
02:56So for those that like really like if they're nerds like us and want to like be a part of
03:00that journey, there's ways that they'll be able to engage not just the data, but even like help find discoveries
03:06in the data sets. And this is going to be a citizen science engine. It's going to be awesome for
03:10them.
