Space telescope Euclid weighed fifteen thousand portions of dark matter in a week, accomplishing a feat that would take the Hubble Space Telescope thirty years, De Standaard reported on Nov. 12.
Dark matter accounts for eighty-five percent of the matter in the universe. It emits no light or radiation, remaining invisible to direct observation. The European Space Agency released the first year of observations from the telescope, revealing hundreds of millions of galaxies and fifteen thousand gravitational lenses.
A fuzzy ring surrounds a bright celestial body in a galaxy located nearly six hundred million light-years away. This ring is not an optical defect of the camera. It is the smeared light of another galaxy located billions of light-years behind the central galaxy. Cosmologists call this optical illusion an Einstein ring, named after the creator of the theory of relativity.
Massive objects warp space around them with their gravity, bending the path of passing light rays. This creates a gravitational lens that enlarges the image of distant galaxies.
Clouds of dark matter primarily create these lenses. Researchers can weigh individual dark matter clouds using the gravitational lenses they produce. A heavier portion of dark matter exerts stronger gravity, which deforms the surrounding space and bends light rays to a greater degree.
“Met deze nieuwe goudmijn aan data gaan we de meest gedetailleerde kaart ooit maken van hoe donkere materie verdeeld is in het heelal,” Koen Kuijken, professor of astronomy at Leiden University, told De Standaard.
Euclid captured a portion of the cosmic sky as large as nearly two thousand times the full moon during its first year of operations. High precision and a wide field of view enabled the telescope to locate thousands of gravitational lenses where only hundreds were known before.
“Waar de Hubbletelescoop dertig jaar voor nodig heeft, doet Euclid in een week,” Koen Kuijken, professor sterrenkunde aan de Universiteit Leiden, said.
