Roman will take up the mantle of the Hubble telescope, just in a much bigger way. In the process, the mission will study galaxies across cosmic time, from the present back to when the universe was only half a billion years old, or about 4 percent of its current age.”Ĭombined with the still operating Hubble Space Telescope and the stunning success of the James Webb Space Telescope, Roman will help us solve some of the universe’s largest mysteries. The idea is to understand the architecture of the universe by mapping, “how matter is structured and distributed throughout the cosmos and measure how the universe has expanded over time. Dubbed the “wide-eyed cousin of the Hubble Space Telescope,” NASA is scheduled to launch Roman in 2027 and use its mass of infrared sensors to obtain the most expansive view of the universe in history. The Roman Space Telescope will attempt to give us some answers. That doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying to understand dark energy and the universe at large. And we may never understand how it emanates from the Big Bang and continues to push the universe apart. We know that dark energy does actually exist, because we can indirectly measure its effects on the universe at large through the examination of supernovae, the cosmic microwave background, and the study of large-scale wave patterns of mass density.ĭark energy is a bit of a known-unknown. We know that dark energy makes up about 68 percent of the total energy of the observable universe and that its power doesn’t dilute the more space it travels. We do know that dark energy is one of three fundamental components of the universe, along with matter and radiation. What is dark energy? Well, we don’t really know because we cannot directly observe or measure it. It runs on something that sounds much more ominous. The expansion of the universe is accelerating.īut this universe doesn’t run on fuel.
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