🔭 Euclid Space Telescope: A Time Machine Searching for the Dark Universe
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the first dataset from its Euclid space telescope, launched in July 2023.
ESA scientists call Euclid the "dark universe detective." With its observations, astronomers hope to understand how dark matter and dark energy—which are thought to make up around 95% of the total mass and energy of the universe—are distributed across the cosmos. These components interact with ordinary matter only through gravity, making them extremely difficult to study.
"The whole purpose of Euclid is really to put those two together to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy and how they're coupled in the universe. Really, Euclid is not only a dark universe detective, it's also a time machine. We will look back 10 billion years in cosmic history," explained Carol Mundell, ESA Director of Science.
Tracking dark matter is especially difficult because gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. To work around this, Euclid looks for gravitational lenses, distortions in spacetime caused by massive objects. These distortions bend and magnify light from background galaxies, similar to glass lenses ⤴️
By mapping these gravitational anomalies, astrophysicists hope to uncover how invisible mass is distributed across space—and, in the process, gain new insight into the universe's evolution.
So far, Euclid has identified 500 new strong gravitational lens candidates. By the end of its six-year mission, it is expected to find over 100,000 such systems—a dramatic increase from the ~1,000 currently known.
Euclid scanned 26 million galaxies in just one week, collecting 35 terabytes of data. By the end of its first year, it's expected to accumulate 2 petabytes—equivalent to streaming 31 years of 4K video. The mission aims to chart nearly one-third of the sky in unprecedented detail.
Mike Walmsley, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, explains that processing such a massive volume of data manually is impossible. That's why scientists use an AI algorithm called Zoobot, which analyzes the data, classifies galaxies, and highlights the most unusual and promising ones for further study.
"We're at a pivotal moment in terms of how we tackle large-scale surveys in astronomy. AI is a fundamental and necessary part of our process in order to fully exploit Euclid's vast dataset. We can deliver cutting-edge science in a matter of weeks, compared with the years-long process of analyzing big surveys like these in the past," says Walmsley.
However, the algorithms are still far from perfect. Zoobot is currently being trained with the help of thousands of volunteers. Anyone can join in by visiting the Galaxy Zoo website and helping to identify galaxies' shape, structure, and features based on their images.
More on the topic:
🚀 Is the U.S. Planning to Build "Living" Space Stations?
🚀 A Supercomputer Built the Biggest Simulation of The Universe
