Image: ESA
NASA has officially joined the European Space Agency's Euclid mission, a space telescope that will launch in 2020 to study the mysterious dark matter and dark energy pervading the universe.
NASA will contribute 16 infrared detectors and four spares for one of the Euclid telescope's two planned science instruments, agency officials announced today (Jan. 24). NASA has also nominated 40 new members for the Euclid Consortium, an international body of 1,000 scientists that will oversee the mission and its development.
"NASA is very proud to contribute to ESA's mission to understand one of the greatest science mysteries of our time," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
Astronomers think the "normal" matter we can see and touch makes up just 4 percent of the universe. The rest is comprised of dark matter and dark energy — strange stuff whose existence scientists infer from its influence on the 4 percent.
Dark energy is especially intriguing, since many researchers believe it to be the strange force responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. But just what it is remains a mystery.
The Euclid mission hopes to shine some light into the universe's darkest corners. After launching to a gravitationally stable spot called the sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, the 4,760-pound (2,160-kilogram) spacecraft will spend six years mapping and studying up to two billion galaxies throughout the universe.
Euclid's observations of these galaxies and their distribution should allow astronomers to better understand how the universe's acceleration has changed over time, revealing key insights about the nature of dark matter and dark energy, NASA officials said.
"ESA's Euclid mission is designed to probe one of the most fundamental questions in modern cosmology, and we welcome NASA's contribution to this important endeavor, the most recent in a long history of cooperation in space science between our two agencies," Alvaro Gimenez, ESA's Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, said in a statement.
The Euclid mission is slated to cost ESA 606 million euros, or $810 million at current exchange rates. NASA is considering its own dark-energy mission, the roughly $1.5 billion Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope. If it eventually gets the official go-ahead, WFIRST is unlikely to launch before 2025, agency officials have said.
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7 Comments
Add CommentA portion of dark matter is invisible because it consists of photons. Since photons have gravity, because gravity bends light, invisible photons add gravity to the universe. Since light can travel in space for billions of years, space must be filled with photons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDark matter forms 23 percent of the universe, and dark energy forms 73 percent. Perhaps, momentum, of all the photons that fill the universe, acts like dark energy in that it tends to cause expansion.
But expansion of the universe may be an illusion. Decades ago, Hubble used a period-luminosity relation for variable stars to establish distances, in what we call Hubble's law, in that galaxies display a linear relation between distance and redshift. I think that photons must emit gravitational waves, and so we get a redshift in photons that travel billions of years in space. We should realize that photons lose energy because they emit gravitational waves, since photons act like bits of matter traveling at the speed of light.
Therefore, I think the telescope to study dark matter may not find much visible dark matter. We should study how light loses energy before searching for dark matter. For example, we could use the reflector on the moon to measure the loss of energy that a laser beam has after it travels to the moon and back to earth.
The acceleration of the expansion of Space implies that either the force of expansion is increasing or that the force that was holding back the expansion is diminishing or that another force is at play. This I find to a priori given that our Universe seems to be in a constant state of balancing forces. Talking about Space is not like talking about Matter or Energy, but the changes that we observe through the observations carried out on Matter and Energy give an indirect method by which we infer certain things about Space itself. IMO The actual existence of Dark Energy is not the question. Let us take the following example.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I were to stand in a dark room and push a wheeled iron cart uphill from that dark room and it were to come past you in a well-lit room would you question the fact that a force of some kind must have been applied to the cart in order for it to have moved past you? Now if at the other side of your well-lit room I was to place another dark room higher up the inclined plane and within that upper dark room I was to place a large electromagnet such that at some specific point in time I were to activate the electromagnet when the cart reached a specific point in the well-lit room, say when it tripped a switch which sent a current to the electromagnet, the magnetic force felt by the iron cart may be such that it overcame the force of Gravity imparted by the incline from the lower dark room to the upper dark room, then you would observe the cart leaving the lower dark room and gradually decelerating as it traveled up the incline until it tripped the switch and thus came under the influence of the Magnet at which point it would begin to accelerate toward the magnet for no reason which would be readily discernible to you. The fact that the cart began to accelerate implies a change in the strength of forces acting on hence you could name such a force whatever you want but you cannot realistically deny its existence.
If the force of expansion is opposed by gravitation in the early, homogeneously disperse universe (indicated by CMB emissions), but over time gravitation increasingly localizes matter (and gravitation) while expansion increasingly produces large scale regions of voided spacetime (unopposed by gravitation), the universal balance of forces must increasingly tip towards expansion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease examine the image of the developing large scale structure of matter and space in the inset above (ignoring the silly cut and paste satellite). The development of large scale voids supports an inherent acceleration of universal expansion without requiring the influence of any unidentified third force, or 'dark energy'. I submit that the concept of dark energy as a separate, distinct force can and should simply be dismissed.
You stated: “I submit that the concept of dark energy as a separate, distinct force can and should simply be dismissed.” I got that, and you are perfectly within your rights to hold that opinion. The fact remains that; if space is expanding at an accelerated rate, then there is a “force” associated with this result and you may call it what you wish. The current sexy term to use is Dark Energy. I could just as easily attribute it to the effects of a heretofore undefined entity which I may choose to call Negative Space, since so far no one has been able to definitively attribute its effects to any clearly defined entity, but our understanding of Space itself is so meager that speculation can quite literally “run rampant” as to what is causing this result.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI myself am increasingly leaning towards the conclusion that what we call the Big Bang BB for short, may have been initiated from outside the confines of the Matter, Energy, Space barrier that existed at the singularity the instant before the event. If you think of one of the mechanisms for creating an Atomic explosion whereby a perfectly timed controlled implosion of fissionable Matter is initiated then it may be possible that a perfectly timed “explosion” of Matter/Energy conversion may occur when an outside force of a certain level is applied at a critical point which would rip apart the Nuclear binding forces in such a way as to mimic its Polar opposite and after the event it would be impossible to say which trigger mechanism started the whole process.
"The fact remains that; if space is expanding at an accelerated rate, then there is a “force” associated with this result and you may call it what you wish."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently you didn't get it. If expansion was initially slowed by gravitation, and the universal effect of gravitation diminishes, then universal expansion will accelerate - no additional form of energy required...
If you stand on a water hose its flow is constrained - until you step off: then its flow will increase.
I didn't make up a different name for dark energy.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
"In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe."
Dark energy was conceived to account for the acceleration of expansion that began around 5 billion years ago - not the initial expansion of the universe. There was the inherent expansion of the universe and gravitation - then, some 7 billion years later, expansion began accelerating. Dark energy is not associated with the initial expansion of the universe.
If some advanced alien civilizations have managed to cloak their entire solar systems, our instruments won't even be able to detect the star that their home planet orbits around!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood news. NASA agrees with the new model of atom as negative charge balloon smeared out and a positive charge balloon smeared in with neutrons at common center.No requirement of strong or weak forces. Gravity is manifestation of mono magnetic coupling push of gravitons in dark energy and expansion is due to anti graviton. These are found in two HIGGS BOSONS recently found by CERN. cheers. so universe is electromagnetic and two opposite charges making all atoms and force of gravity only force due to electro magnetic induction. CHEERS. Nothing to worry, very simple theory of balloon inside universes of matter and anti matter on opposite entropy path creating dark energy at common boundary by annihilation and injected into our universe in non isotropic manner for all this drama of life at our zone and we are confused with NEWTONIAN GRAVITY OR RELATIVITY OR STANDARD MODEL ETC ETC . ABANDON ALL. Read theories developed by DURGADAS DATTA PUBLISHED IN ASTRONOMY.NET ETCETTC.
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