Key ideas from Katherine Freese

• Dark stars could be the first stars powered by dark matter annihilation rather than fusion, growing to a million solar masses and a billion times brighter than the Sun
• Paleo detectors use billion-year-old rocks from deep underground to search for dark matter tracks, replacing detector volume with time
• The James Webb Space Telescope has found candidate dark stars among early universe objects that are unexpectedly bright and difficult to explain
• Dark energy calculations produce the biggest mismatch in physics history - off by 10 to the 120th power from theoretical predictions
• DESI experiment suggests dark energy may be changing over time, though simpler analysis methods question this conclusion
• Dark matter forms invisible proto-galaxies first, allowing ordinary matter to fall in and create the visible universe we see today
• WIMPs can be detected three ways: 'make it' in particle accelerators, 'shake it' in underground detectors, or 'break it' through annihilation products
• Xenon dark matter experiments have bought the entire world supply of xenon, making the element extremely expensive