The Euclid Space Telescope launched on July 1, 2023 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket and is now orbiting the sun 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, alongside NASA’s flagship James Webb Space Telescope.

Euclid opened his lens to space on his mission: to find and then quantify mass and invisible dark energy.

Within six years, the space telescope will photograph a third of the sky and photograph 1.5 billion galaxies.

Analysis of all these images will show how dark forces dictated the content and shape of the universe.

Perhaps Euclid will revolutionize not only our understanding of dark matter and energy, but also the fundamental theories of cosmology.

These observations can confirm or refute our understanding of gravity and the history of the universe.

Dark matter accelerates stars

Galaxies form large clusters. As early as the 1930s, observations showed that galaxies in these clusters orbited each other faster than could be explained by the stars we see.

Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky analyzed this and suggested that there is mass in galaxies that we cannot see – he called it “dark matter” (in German). Dunk the matter).

Dark matter also ensures that stars in the galaxy orbit the galactic core faster than is actually possible.

In the 1970s, American astronomer Vera Rubin measured the rotation of a number of galaxies and realized that galaxies contained more than five times the amount of dark matter as regular matter.

Since then, physicists have been trying to figure out what dark matter is.

But all we know is that it does not radiate, reflect, or absorb light, and it passes through ordinary matter without emitting the slightest sound.

Billions of dark matter particles can pass through our bodies every second without us noticing.

In hundreds of experiments, physicists have tried to find dark matter, but so far it has left no trace, except that its gravity pulls down ordinary matter.

Gravity causes ordinary matter to fuse to form massive cosmic structures. Galaxies are like dewdrops in a three-dimensional spider’s web, and the threads are dark matter.

But now the Euclid Telescope will map this matter.

Using the Euclid telescope, astronomers will be able to create a three-dimensional image of the universe.

The image is comparable to what doctors make with a CT scan.

The 3D images allow researchers to see how galaxies have come together over the past 10 billion years. In this way they can also discover how dark matter shaped the universe.

In addition, they will use the “weak gravitational lensing effect” to detect dark matter. This effect is called because dark matter – like ordinary matter – bends the space around it, meaning that light from distant galaxies must weave through the universe to reach us.

For example, dark matter acts like a lens that makes galaxies appear somewhat distorted when their light enters the Euclid telescope.

Analyzes of distorted galaxies could bring scientists closer to the truth about dark matter.

The composition of matter is not yet known, but two candidates point the way: heavy particles called “weaks.” (weakly interacting massive particles) And lighter particles called axons.

Euclid’s observations can be compared with computer models of weaklings and axes, directing researchers towards the correct conclusion.

The universe is accelerating

The universe is expanding. Researchers realized this as early as the 1920s: galaxies become farther apart as the distance between them increases, and this can be measured.

Astronomers believed that this expansion was slowed by matter in the universe, because matter attracts matter through gravity.

Instead, in 1998, they discovered that this expansion was not only continuing unabated, but accelerating. So there must be energy that opposes the uniform force of gravity and “pushes out” – this is called dark energy.

In the simplest model, dark energy is embedded in space and acts as a repulsive force – negative pressure – that causes space to expand.

More space means more dark energy, which means more space, and so it goes.

But maybe dark energy isn’t that simple.

Using Euclid, researchers can figure out how quickly galaxies have moved away from each other over the past 10 billion years.

They can also find out if dark energy always behaves the same way in the universe. If forces have changed over time, we need to find a new model for the universe and its evolution.

Theories can be rewritten

Euclid is the only space telescope that will focus exclusively on the dark universe. But its measurements will not be isolated, because the Vera C. Rubin Large American Observatory is currently under construction.

This telescope will be located on Mount Cerro Pachón in northern Chile, and will image the sky in the Southern Hemisphere starting in 2024.

In addition, NASA’s next major instrument, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will launch in 2027. It will be twice the size of Euclid and will be able to see farther into space.

Combining Euclid’s data with Rubin’s and Roman’s could lead to more accurate calculations when it comes to understanding dark energy.

The big question is whether the best model of the universe developed by astrophysicists is correct.

Physicists design them based on two assumptions: that matter is evenly distributed, and that the universe looks the same in all directions, and is expanding at the same rate in all directions.

If Euclid’s measurements show that this is not the case — for example, if the universe is expanding faster in one direction than in the other — physicists will have to go back to the drawing board.

But the biggest surprise will be if it turns out that Einstein’s general theory of relativity cannot be applied on a large scale.

Then scientists would have to come up with a completely new theory of gravity.