The Machine That Lets Us Look At Dark Energy

Summary

Curiosity Weekly – Episode Summary

Episode Title: The Machine That Lets Us Look At Dark Energy
Host: Dr. Samantha Meen (aka Dr. Samantha Yammine)
Guest: Swapna Krishna, science journalist and space enthusiast
Air Date: June 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week’s Curiosity Weekly dives deep into the mysteries of the universe, focusing on the upcoming launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Dr. Samantha Meen opens the episode with surprising new research calculating pi in Minecraft, then welcomes Swapna Krishna to explore how the Roman telescope might revolutionize our understanding of dark energy, exoplanets, and the expansion of the cosmos. The episode closes with a thought-provoking segment on how mental health questionnaires may be biased by intelligence level.

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Key Segments and Discussion Points

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1. Using Minecraft to Calculate Pi (01:50–06:43)

Overview:
Dr. Meen introduces an unexpected blend of mathematics and gaming—a new study in which mathematicians estimated pi within the world of Minecraft.

Key Points:

• Minecraft, described for non-gamers as “a digital world built entirely out of LEGO bricks, but all cubes, not rectangles,” is a platform for both creativity and computation.
• Two mathematicians used the Monte Carlo method in Minecraft:
  • Built a square arena (blue blocks) with a circle (red blocks) inside.
  • Used slimes for random movement to simulate “darts.”
  • Hoppers collected dropped items after monster battles to proxy for dartboard results.
• Final pi estimate: 3.283 (actual value is ~3.14)—not perfect, but demonstrates playful, accessible math.
• Dr. Meen mentions the perennial pi vs. tau debate:

  “Some say we should abandon pi entirely and instead use tau...But others say, you know, pi is way too deeply rooted in history and culture to change. Like imagine trying to change all those textbooks. The US can't even switch to metric, so how can we expect...to collectively switch to tau?” (05:37)

• Quote Highlights:
  • “If a blocky world full of fighting creatures can get us closer to understanding pi, I mean, I can't imagine a better reminder to stop taking learning too seriously and start playing.” (06:19)

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2. The Roman Space Telescope: Studying Dark Energy (08:56–25:08)

Introduction to the Roman Telescope (08:56–09:37)

• Roman is NASA’s major new telescope, launching as early as 2026.
• Expected to revolutionize the study of dark energy—the mysterious force causing the universe’s accelerated expansion.
• Guest: Swapna Krishna, space journalist who toured NASA Goddard to see Roman up close.

How the Roman Telescope Differs from Hubble and JWST (09:43–10:39)

• Not a replacement for Hubble or JWST—complements existing telescopes.
• Key Feature: Wide field of view at Hubble’s resolution, enabling vast sky surveys.
• Swapna:

  “Roman is going to complement both Hubble and JWST...It’s got a really wide field of view. So it’s going to be able to take really wide photos of the sky...at the same resolution as Hubble’s camera.” (09:43)

Where It’s Going and Observatory Advantages (10:39–11:33)

• Roman will orbit at Lagrange Point 2 (L2), about a million miles from Earth (same as JWST).
• Unlike Hubble, avoids atmospheric drag and satellite streaks.
• Hubble expected to be defunct by 2035 due to low orbit.

Launch and Data Timeline (11:33–12:10)

• Expected travel time to L2: about 1 month; commissioning: another ~5 months.
• Fewer instruments than JWST, so timeline for first images may be shorter.

What the Data Will Look Like (12:10–13:07)

• Wide field images:

  “We’re not going to get as close up sharp images as JWST, but we will get them at the same resolution as Hubble. So it’s just going to be kind of a wider field of view, but we will still get really cool pictures back.” (12:23)

Roman’s Unique Instruments (13:15–14:09)

• Wide Field Camera: 100x field of Hubble, covers visible to near-infrared.
• Coronagraph: Advanced star-light blocking instrument to directly image Jupiter-sized exoplanets.
  • Swapna:

    “It will be able to directly image Jupiter-sized exoplanets, which blows my mind.” (13:59)

Why Exoplanets Excite Science Communicators (14:09–15:41)

• Public fascination: seeing “an actual exoplanet, a photo of one. Not an artist’s conception…”
• The grandeur of images like the Pillars of Creation helps people grasp the vastness of space.
• Quote:

  “I think one of those things...we’re gonna start seeing more and more interest in just exoplanets and seeing what’s outside our solar system, what’s out there?” (14:16)

How the Coronagraph Works (15:41–16:14)

• Blocks star light to finally reveal real images of exoplanets, rather than indirect data or artistic interpretations.

Roman’s Role in Understanding Dark Energy (16:14–19:19)

• The “Hubble tension”: Competing measurements for the rate of universe expansion; two methodologies yield different results.
• Roman will map both visible and dark matter, studying gravity to infer dark energy’s role.
• Swapna explains:

  “This rate, the Hubble constant, can’t be multiple values. It has to be one ... either our understanding of the universe is wrong, the model is flawed, or the measurements are wrong. ... Roman is going to...maybe give us once and for all a value of dark energy that we can use to further our understanding..." (17:34–18:56)

Ramifications for Physics and Everyday Science (19:19–20:42)

• Questions about dark energy challenge the foundation of physics—are physical laws throughout the cosmos and time constant?
• Broader understanding could aid the search for life in the universe.

Mapping the Invisible: How Roman Will Measure Dark Energy (21:38–22:42)

• Roman “sky survey” will map all matter, including invisible dark matter (detected only by its gravitational influence).
• By tracking gravity and matter distribution, Roman will help quantify dark energy's counteracting role to gravity.

Launch Logistics and the Naming of Roman (22:42–24:55)

• Launch scheduled for September 2026 (earliest), using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
• Telescope named after Nancy Grace Roman, the “Mother of Hubble,” to honor her transformative work for space science.
• Swapna’s tribute:

  “She’s the reason we have space telescopes ... it's really meaningful to have this telescope named after this giant in NASA science. Plus, it’s under budget and ahead of schedule and so that’s just fitting for a telescope named after a woman.” (24:07–24:55)

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3. Measurement Bias in Mental Health Questionnaires (27:40–30:50)

Overview: Dr. Meen highlights new research indicating that widely used depression scales may not measure mental health equally across different IQ levels.

Key Points:

• Two depression assessment tools fail to function reliably for people across the IQ spectrum, challenging decades of comparative research.
• Higher IQ individuals may interpret or experience mental health differently, rendering some questionnaire results unreliable.
• Alternative approaches proposed: objective data (sleep, activity trackers), real-time “how do you feel?” check-ins.
• Quote:

  “How much of what we know about depression is shaped by the limitations of the questions we’ve been asking?” (30:45)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Highlight | |-----------|-----------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:37 | Dr. Samantha Meen | “The US can’t even switch to metric, so how can we expect...to collectively switch to tau?” | | 06:19 | Dr. Samantha Meen | “If a blocky world full of fighting creatures can get us closer to understanding pi...start playing.” | | 09:43 | Swapna Krishna | “Roman is going to complement both Hubble and JWST...not a replacement for anything.” | | 13:59 | Swapna Krishna | “It will be able to directly image Jupiter-sized exoplanets, which blows my mind.” | | 14:16 | Swapna Krishna | “We’re gonna start seeing more and more interest in just exoplanets and seeing what’s outside...” | | 17:34 | Swapna Krishna | “The Hubble constant can’t be multiple values. It has to be one ... the model is flawed, or...wrong.” | | 24:07 | Swapna Krishna | “She’s the reason we have space telescopes ... it's really meaningful...named after this giant.” | | 24:57 | Swapna Krishna | “Plus, it’s under budget and ahead of schedule...just fitting for a telescope named after a woman.” | | 30:45 | Dr. Samantha Meen | “How much of what we know about depression is shaped by the limitations of the questions...?” |

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Timestamps at a Glance

• 01:50: Show intro; pi in Minecraft segment
• 06:43: Sponsor break
• 08:56: NASA's Roman telescope segment begins
• 09:43: Swapna Krishna introduces Roman's capabilities
• 10:39: Details on telescope’s destination and advantages
• 11:33: Timeline for data return post-launch
• 12:10: Anticipating Roman’s astronomical images
• 13:15: The Wide Field Camera and coronagraph explained
• 15:41: Engineering challenge of directly imaging exoplanets
• 16:25: Roman’s mission to resolve the “Hubble tension” over dark energy
• 19:25: Why resolving this matters to science and physics
• 21:48: Methods for measuring dark energy with Roman’s sky survey
• 22:42: Launch scheduling and logistics
• 24:07: Nancy Grace Roman’s legacy
• 27:40: Bias in mental health questionnaires segment

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Episode Summary

This episode of Curiosity Weekly artfully blends fun and rigorous science, moving from the quirky calculation of pi in Minecraft to the edge of cosmological mystery. The conversation with Swapna Krishna provides a clear, layperson-friendly roadmap to why NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is a game-changer: not a replacement but a complement to Hubble and JWST; capable of mass-scale sky surveys; equipped to directly capture exoplanets; and most crucially, positioned to combat one of the great tensions in astrophysics—the true nature of dark energy.

Swapna’s excitement, bolstered by excellent analogies and real-world context, keeps listeners engaged whether they geek out over galaxies or just appreciate the power of a well-timed space image. The episode ends practically, reminding us that even our most established science (like mental health surveys) is continually evolving as our understanding—and our measurement tools—improve.

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Transcript

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[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Curiosity Weekly. Is there a burning science question you've had on the brain or a topic you're desperate to hear more about from an expert? Well, if so, let us know. We're always looking for listener suggestions on how we can make the show better. So drop us a line, aka, you know, rate or review us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks. There's a common refrain in astrophysics, the universe is always expanding. And yeah, sure, I guess I get that, but I still have some questions, like what is it expanding into exactly? And why is it expanding? Well, astrophysicists have the answer to both of those questions, partially as a result of their research using the hubble telescope. But later this year, a new telescope is set to provide even more answers to the expansion of our universe. Here to tell us all about it is journalist and space enthusiast Swapna Krishna. Before that, we'll look into a new study where mathematicians used Minecraft to calculate PI, a combination of words I didn't think I'd ever say. And later, we'll talk about the measurement bias and how that's affecting so certain mental health questionnaires. Welcome to Curiosity Weekly. My name is Dr. Samantha Meen. Let's expand our minds. PI is everywhere in nature, but I'm not talking about the pie that you can eat, although I do love that one, too. I'm talking about the number 3.14, that mathematical constant that helps describe every perfect circle in the universe. And now PI is also inside the Minecraft video game. If you've never played Minecraft, it's okay. Me neither. Just imagine a digital world built entirely out of LEGO bricks, but all cubes, not rectangles. You can build castles in the sky or dig a tunnel straight deep underground. And hardcore players are super creative. They're doing things like recreating the entire planet Earth at a one to one scale, or building fully functional computers using Redstone circuits. That's Minecraft's equivalent of electricity. They've even built a library filled with banned books so people can actually read literature that's censored in the real world. Pretty neat. And now there are two mathematicians who calculated PI inside Minecraft. To estimate PI, the team used the Monte Carlo method. That's a computational technique that simulates random events. The typical approach is to set up a dartboard shaped like a circle inside a square, and you drop random darts onto it. Since we know the area of the square and the circle, a simple geometry formula lets us reverse engineer the value of PI by calculating the percentage of darts that land in the circle versus the total number thrown. The math is surprisingly accurate. You can just take our word for it. To do that same setup in the Minecraft world, though, the team had to look to the available resources. So they set up a square arena with blue blocks and a circle inside of it made out of red blocks. They added hoppers. Those are blocks that collect and count items that drop onto them. And once they had the arena set up, they unleashed slimes and Zoglin monsters to fight each other. Slimes move around randomly, acting as the source of randomness for the experiment. Zoglins. Oh, they kill slimes. Every time a slime died, it dropped an item, and that was the proxy for the random darts in the Monte Carlo method. By counting how many items landed inside the circle versus the total items collected by the hoppers, the mathematicians did the math and their final estimate came out to 3.283. As a reminder, PI is 3.14. So not exactly accurate. But the point was to show that math can be fun and accessible. And, you know, it was pretty close. Plus, with a bigger arena, more slimes, and essentially more data, it probably would become more accurate. So the team turned a monster battle into a geometry lesson. And PI is every bit worthy of that extra bit of attention. PI is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, roughly 3.141592654. And it goes on and on. The number pops up in places you'd never expect. It appears in the physics of waves, the structure of DNA, and even the geometry of snowflakes. However, some say we should abandon PI entirely and instead use tau, which is simply twice the value of PI. The argument's that tau makes formulas cleaner. Going all the way around a circle would be 1 Tau instead of 2 PI. But others say, you know, PI is way too deeply rooted in history and culture to change. Like imagine trying to change all those textbooks. The US can't even switch to metrics, so how can we expect the rest of the world and them to collectively switch to Tao if a blocky world full of fighting creatures can get us closer to understanding PI? I mean, I can't imagine a better reminder to stop taking learning too seriously and start playing.

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[Dr. Samantha Meen]

NASA is launching a new telescope this year that may solve one of the biggest current mysteries in astrophysics. Dark energy. See, our universe is ballooning outward as space itself stretches, and scientists think it's because of the force of dark energy. The Nancy Grace Roman telescope is a massive new telescope scheduled to launch as early as 2026. It should answer some of those burning questions about dark energy. To get us ready for the countdown, we're chatting with Swapna Krishna, a science journalist specializing in all things space, and she got to tour NASA Goddard to see the new telescope in person. And now she can tell us all about it. Welcome, Swapna.

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[Dr. Samantha Meen]

I'm wondering what makes it so different from all the other telescopes that NASA's launched.

[Swapna Krishna]

So the thing I really like about the Roman telescope is that it is not a replacement for anything. This is something I get asked about a lot because people are like, we just launched JWST and there's already a replacement. No, that's not what's happening here. Roman is going to complement both Hubble and JWST and all those other amazing telescopes we have, whether they're NASA telescopes or international. And so the thing that Roman is going to do is it's got a really wide field of view. And so it is going to be able to take really wide photos of the sky, do what are called sky surveys, but at the same resolution as Hubble's camera. So it's going to just bring down massive, massive data sets and scientists are going to parse through them to find all kinds of new things.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Okay, so where is this telescope headed?

[Swapna Krishna]

It's going to L2, Lagrange point 2. That is about a million miles away from the Earth. And so it's already where JWST is, so it'll have another telescope to welcome it to the neighborhood. But the good news with putting a telescope at L2 versus Hubble, which is in low Earth orbit, is that first of all, we're not going have to deal with atmospheric drag. Right now we are having problems with Hubble because it is so low in Earth's atmosphere. I think by like something like 2035, it's going to be too low to observe anymore. And on top of that, Hubble's now having issues, partially because of atmospheric drag, that actual satellite trails are interfering with its observations. So Roman is not going to have to deal with that because it is going to be a million miles away from the Earth.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Wow. How long does it take to get a million miles away from Earth? Do we know, like how long till it'll be sending stuff back?

[Swapna Krishna]

So it's going to be about a month to get there usually. And then if the timeline of JWST is any indication, it will be about five months of commissioning once it arrives to make sure everything is working correctly. Now, Roman does have fewer instruments than jwst, so it may be less time. But I think that telescope launched December 25, I think it launched on Christmas, and we got the first images in mid July. So, you know, seven months, I think, for that one.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

I still remember the day we got the first JWST images and they were just so stunning. Are we expecting stuff like that from Roman or what's that data gonna look like for the everyday person?

[Swapna Krishna]

It's going to be a wider view. So one of the coolest things about JWST is we got to see a lot of side by side with Hubble and jdl. With Hubble and jwst, you remember like the Pillars of Creation still one of the most iconic images of all time, and we got to really see those two side by side because Roman has such a wide field of view. We're not going to get as close up sharp images as jwst, but we will get them at the same resolution as Hubble. So it's just going to be kind of a wider field of view, but we will still get really cool pictures back.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

What data is it layering on Top of that, like, what new data is it getting that JWST isn't?

[Swapna Krishna]

So Roman has two main instruments. First is its Wide Field camera, which as I said, is the same resolution as Hubble's, just like something like 100 times wider. And that operates in visible light to near infrared. Hubble is UV visible and like a little bit of infrared, and JWST is near infrared to mid infrared. So Roman's kind of at the middle of those two in terms of its observable light. So that's one tool it has. The other one, which I think is super cool is the coronagraph, which basically uses things like mirrors and prisms to block out the light of stars. And it will be able to directly image Jupiter, Jupiter sized exoplanets, which blows my mind.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Why are you so excited about exoplanets? I mean, I can guess, but what's your enthusiasm about them for?

[Swapna Krishna]

I think exoplanets are one of those things. As a science communicator specializing in space, there are certain things that you know, will capture people's imaginations. Cool photos like pillars of creation, Artemis 2, because it's humans doing this cool thing. And I think one of those things, I think we're gonna start seeing more and more interest in just exoplanets and seeing like what's outside our solar system, what's out there? Because it is so hard to conceive of the vastness of space. I keep talking about pillars of creation. Part of the reason is just because it's an image almost everybody can bring to mind if I mention it. But like our. If you look at that photo, if you think of that photo, one of those little red stars, one star is the size of our solar system. Like, and this is like, it's hard to just grasp the size and complexity of space. And I think things like images, I think things like seeing an exoplanet, like seeing an actual exoplanet, a photo of one. Not an artist's conception, not a visualization, but like an actual picture. I think that is really going to spark an interest in this kind of science.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

I can only imagine what Roman will capture. And you said it's because it can block out the light from stars that it gets this like much crisper view, I guess.

[Swapna Krishna]

Yeah, it'll basically, it's really hard to see planets, it's very hard to see exoplanets because they're so overwhelmed by the light from their host star. So what the main challenge is blocking that light as much as possible to be able to look at the actual planet and see, you know, what the features of it are. And so the Roman telescope will have the most advanced coronagraph we've ever launched when it launches in September, October, whenever, later this year.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

That's exciting. And it's also a big goal of it, is to further our understanding of dark energy. What are the gaps there that Roman is supposed to help fill in?

[Swapna Krishna]

Oh, well, as you mentioned in the intro, Dark energy is just one of the things that we cannot kind of get a grasp on. We know that universe is expanding. We know the rate at which it is expanding is accelerating, which is a hard thing to wrap your mind around. So not only is it getting bigger, it's getting bigger, faster. And we think that the thing driving the acceleration of that rate is dark energy. About 13.8 billion years ago, the big bang. Now, 9 billion years later, the rate of expansion of the universe starts increasing. So that's when we really think dark energy started really taking hold in our universe. But the problem is that we're seeing is that according to the model that we use to describe the universe, which describes it pretty accurately, it's called the standard model of cosmology, Lambda cdm. Same thing. It tells us that the force or object, we don't actually know what dark energy is. So the force or object that it is has to be constant over time. That's the way it works. It's a constant. But we are finding two different measurements of dark energy based on how we measure whether we measure the cosmic microwave background, which is the first light left over from the Big bang, that's an ancient source, and that gives us one. And measuring that distribution gives us one reading and a more modern source, which is looking at the distance that certain types of supernova are moving away from us, Looking at the rate that they're moving away from us, that gives us another measurement. So there's two different measurements. And there are other ways to measure the expansion of the universe that gives us other measurements. But this can't. This rate, the Hubble constant can't be multiple values. It has to be one value to fit in to our understanding of the universe. So either our understanding of the universe is wrong, the model is flawed, our understanding of dark energy is wrong, and, you know, it can evolve over time, or the measurements are wrong. You know, is there some other thing we're not understanding that is causing this inconsistency? So one thing that Roman is going to do, it's going to look at the distribution of matter in our universe. Both Visible matter and dark matter, because dark matter is important too. And look at how gravity is working within our universe and try and map basically dark energy's influence on the universe and maybe give us once and for all a value of dark energy that we can use to further our understanding of what is going on around us. Because right now we clearly are missing something.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

I was gonna ask why that understanding is so important for astrophysics, but is it just because we're more missing?

[Swapna Krishna]

There's a huge, like, there's a huge part of it. It's like, it's called the Hubble tension because we don't understand, but it's becoming like a Hubble like fracture or a husband Hubble or like a Hubble cosmic divide. Like, the more we're learning about it, the more we're getting distinct values for dark energy, two or three distinct values. And it should be. The more, the more we're learning and the more we're measuring, it should be coming together. It would be, you know, as we're refining our instruments, as we're, as we're understanding, because a lot of this discrepancy has been blamed on incorrect measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope. And now we're learning that is might not be the case. And another survey, the Dark Energy sky survey, I think it's called desi, it told us that, yeah, dark energy may have been a different value in the past than now, which is mind blowing.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Do we think that that astrophysical understanding of our universe does have ramifications to our everyday lives? Like, will it change any physics on Earth? Or it's more an understanding of how all physics everywhere works?

[Swapna Krishna]

I think it's an understanding of how all physics everywhere works. And I think it's an understanding of physics over time. Because was physics in the early universe the same as it is now? This is a question that we have to ask because of dark energy. And I think a lot of what we do and a lot of what we look at in science and looking at space is looking at life, looking for life on other planets, but understanding the universe around us in all its aspects. I feel like to find life on other planets, we need to understand the weirdness of what created that life on Earth. And part of that is understanding the universe. And so while it might be a stretch to say we need to understand the expansion of the universe to find life on other planets, I think that understanding as much as we can about ourselves and the universe around us helps us in those larger science goals.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

So we, we need to learn More about dark energy. But dark energy is invisible, or at least we don't really know what it looks like, I guess. How is Roman measuring it?

[Swapna Krishna]

It's going to do a sky survey of ma visible and dark matter, which we can't see. Dark matter, we only know it's there because of its effects on the rest of the galaxy. By mapping all matter, we'll be able to basically understand how dark energy works on that matter. Because the big thing about dark energy is it counteracts gravity. By this point, with the amount of visible matter and dark matter in our universe, the acceleration of the universe, that shouldn't be happening, the universe should be expanding, should not be accelerating. So dark energy is strong enough to counteract gravity. And so by understanding gravity, which to do that we need to map matter, we can better calculate the rate of whatever dark energy is doing to the universe.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Okay, so we're hoping it launches September 2026. That's the earliest date. How? Well, I guess do we know what could delay it? What are we expecting in terms of its launch? The usual stuff like weather. Are there other things that are kind of critical?

[Swapna Krishna]

Not really. It needs to get made it to the, it needs to get sent to Florida with no damage and then made it to its launch vehicle, the Falcon Heavy. That's all pretty standard stuff. So I don't think there should be super delays with that. It's hard to be confident about weather. So yeah, but basically it needs to get down there and get put on a Falcon Heavy, the rocket with no damage. And so that's, that's kind of, that's the, that's what we're looking at next.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

And then in terms of the launch itself, are we expecting like the same kind of countdown we got for let's say the very watched Artemis 2 launch? What besides the humans being on the rocket are different about a telescope launch?

[Swapna Krishna]

So there'll be a few things different. This will be a SpaceX launch. So with all luck, we will still see a similar view of the countdown clock and the launch vehicle in the background. That's my hope.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Now, this telescope was named after Nancy Grace Roman, the first chief of astronomy at NASA and advocate for the Hubble Space Telescope. Can you tell us more about that?

[Swapna Krishna]

So she's the reason we have space telescopes. Like basically, she's the one who shepherded Hubble. She's the reason we have the Hubble Space Telescope. It's really meaningful to have this telescope named after this giant in NASA science. I think it's a really, it's a gift to the people working at NASA. I think it's kind of like an acknowledgment that like what you do matters. I think it's very meaningful for the people working there and for especially people at NASA Science and the people at Goddard, because that's where it's being built that they have this telescope named after one of the big people of NASA Science. Plus, it's under budget and ahead of schedule and so that's just fitting for a telescope named after a woman.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Thank you Swapna so much for sharing your insights. I will be eagerly following along as we approach launch and everything that you write about it. It's fantastic.

[Swapna Krishna]

Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Swapna Krishna is a science journalist specializing in all things space. She's the author of the book Stargazing Contemplate the Cosmos to find Inner Peace. You can find her all over social media and penning pieces for Nat Geo, Wired, and more.

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[Swapna Krishna]

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[Swapna Krishna]

That's R O t h y s.com

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[Dr. Samantha Meen]

Anyone who's ever sat in a doctor's waiting room knows the ritual you tick through a standard questionnaire about sleep, appetite and mood. Should we assume everyone interprets those questions the same way? Though recent research suggests that two of our most common depression assessment scales don't actually measure everyone equally, they simply don't function reliably across different IQ levels. But this isn't about the risk of misdiagnosis for individuals. This discovery could challenge how we compare mental health across groups. Decades of pooled comparisons between studies may have missed things if they weren't accounting for intelligence. A team from Poland figured this out by starting with a simple how does IQ relate to mental health? They compared data from two large US Surveys that tracked thousands of people over decades. At first it showed an interesting pattern. Mental health appeared to improve as IQ rose, but then it dipped at the highest levels. The team also ran a statistical check to see whether the depression scales were actually measuring the same thing for people with high IQ versus low iq. In other words, when someone with a low IQ checks a box that says I feel down most days, and then someone with a high IQ checks that same box, are they describing the same experience? Well, it turns out both scales failed the test. The questionnaires don't function the same for people with high IQ versus low iq. That means their initial conclusion can't be trusted using these tools alone. And it also means that any other study that used these standard questionnaires without taking into account iq, they could also be flawed. In this study, which is published in the journal Intelligence, the authors explain that these questionnaires ask people to interpret questions about their internal states. But people with very high IQ may think about mental health differently. Their experience may not fit neatly into questions written for a broad population. It's just not calibrated for them. And the problem likely doesn't stop at depression. A study author told Scientific American that they've already seen similar results with loneliness scales, and now they're testing personality measures. So how do we fix this? Well, we could use methods that strip out the interpretation part entirely and instead use tools that track sleep and activity automatically, or apps that do random check ins throughout the day that ask how you feel right now, rather than asking you to describe your emotional life retrospectively or after the fact. This raises the question how much of what we know about depression is shaped by the limitations of the questions we've been asking. For Warner Bros. Discovery Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Teresa Carey, our producer is Chiara Noni, our audio engineer is Nick Kharisimi and head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Yuimeen. Thanks for listening. Listening.

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[Swapna Krishna]

when

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[Swapna Krishna]

I provide these investments? You'd be how do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal,

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