Bright ideas for a dark universe

Some of the most burning questions about our universe, such as the origin of dark matter, the generation of neutrino masses, the solution of the strong CP problem, seem to invoke the presence of new, ‘’dark’’ particles. But how do we look for these elusive particles? In this talk I will advocate for the use of astrophysical objects, which in the past have already provided us signals of new physics. In particular, I will describe how we can use future telescopes to possibly detect dark matter and what stars can teach us about physics beyond the standard model.