There's a great mystery out there in the universe, one which continues to perplex and baffle the greatest scientific minds on our planet, who can only speculate as to what it truly is, and its place in the universe.
That mystery is dark matter, and it's a mystery scientists hope they'll be able to unravel courtesy the Euclid Telescope, planned for a 2020 launch into orbit around Earth. The European Space Agency hammered out the final details of the planned mission last week, with financing for the construction, operation, and launch of Euclid pegged at 600 million Euros.
Euclid will come equipped with a powerful near-infrared camera, as well as a visible wavelength camera. Its mission will be study how the light from distant galaxies gets subtly distorted as it travels across the vast expanses of space, presumably by the dark matter that we can otherwise only detect through those effects it has on the universe, and the galaxies that are amply sprinkled throughout it.
It will attempt to accomplish what the Hubble Space Telescope did for a very small section of the sky back in 2007, giving us a rare glimpse at the possible makeup of dark matter, which accounts for nearly 85% of the mass in the universe, let leaving behind just as many new questions.
Euclid will be able to generate 3D maps of billions of galaxies, stretching back 10 billion light-years from Earth to show the effect that dark matter and dark energy have on light as it has travelled to us, and creating much larger and more accurate images than what Hubble was able to, giving scientists a clearer picture of the many subtleties of dark matter.
While NASA would like to launch their own mission to study dark matter, their funding currently makes such a mission impossible, giving the ESA a clear head start on one of the greatest mysteries facing humanity.
This expensive mission to learn more about dark matter comes just days after a new theory from a trio of Spanish professors disputed the very existence of dark matter, claiming the gravitational effects that suggest the presence of dark matter are actually being caused by the slowing of time.
Will Euclid finally gives us some concrete information regarding dark matter? Or will it just result in yet more questions than answers? Does dark matter even exist? Let us know what you think.
