Dark matter

The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched the Euclid telescope at 0:12 am on the 2nd. ESA.

The Euclid Space Telescope was launched with a mission to uncover the secrets of the birth of the universe and the cause of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.

The European Space Agency (ESA) succeeded in launching the Euclid space telescope aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA at 0:12 a.m. on the 2nd, Korea time.

Euclid will arrive at the second Lagrangian point (L2) where the James Webb Space Telescope is located a month later and will be tested for seven months. The second Lagrangian point is the point where the gravitational forces of the Earth and the Sun are balanced and the gravitational force becomes zero, and it is the position where the space telescope can stably observe the universe.

The goal of the Euclid Space Telescope is to explore dark energy and dark matter. Among the substances that exist in the universe, the substances that humans can see are only about 5% of celestial objects such as stars and planets and gases. Scientists explain that the remaining 68% of the universe is dark energy and 27% dark matter.

According to the theory, dark energy is an ‘unknown force’ that has not yet been explored, and is presumed to be a force that accelerates the expansion of the universe. Dark matter is a concept introduced to explain gravitational phenomena in the universe that cannot be explained by the action of observable matter. Axion, WIMP, etc. have been mentioned as candidates for dark matter, but nothing has been accurately observed or revealed. Scientists expect to explain the birth and expansion process of the universe by identifying dark energy and dark matter.

The Euclid Space Telescope has a field of view 200 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing it to observe galaxies 10 billion light years away. Euclid Consortium scientists plan to use the observation results to draw a 3D map of the universe for 10 billion years and then analyze the gravitational lensing phenomenon that appears on the map.

Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon in which light from galaxies or celestial bodies that are billions of light years away is slightly distorted by the gravitational influence of other celestial bodies in the middle. “If we remove the influence of observable matter, such as other celestial bodies, from the gravitational lensing phenomenon, we will be able to calculate the existence of dark matter or dark energy,” said project manager Giuseppe Laca Euclid.

The Euclid Space Telescope is expected to release its first observations in October. Joseph Aschbacher, director of the ESA, said, “The Euclid telescope is the beginning of a new scientific attempt to answer the most interesting questions of modern science.”