{"id":352699,"date":"2025-12-16T20:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/352699\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T20:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:07:08","slug":"why-nasas-new-4-billion-telescope-will-stare-at-absolutely-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/352699\/","title":{"rendered":"Why NASA’s New $4 Billion Telescope Will Stare at Absolutely Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, leaked budget cuts<\/a> cast a dark shadow over the future of NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope\u2014a multi-billion-dollar instrument with the capacity of \u201c200 Hubbles<\/a>,\u201d according to experts. Thankfully, Roman has (seemingly) weathered the budgetary storm and is now sailing<\/a> toward its launch date in 2027. One of the telescope\u2019s first tasks will be to stare into the void. Literally.<\/p>\n

Voids are sparsely populated regions of the universe. Because they\u2019re mostly empty, researchers suspect these regions are dominated by dark energy<\/a>, a hypothetical force accelerating our universe\u2019s expansion. Because dark energy is \u201cdark,\u201d it\u2019s excruciatingly difficult for scientists to study how and why it affects things we can observe, like galaxies and star formation. But a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a> lays out a detailed action plan to use Roman\u2019s enhanced capacities to do just that\u2014investigate the \u201cdark\u201d voids scattered throughout the universe.<\/p>\n

The multi-billion-dollar telescope <\/p>\n

Nancy Grace Roman<\/a> was a pioneering figure in American astronomy in the late 20th century. Her contributions to the development and launch of the Hubble Space Telescope fundamentally changed the resolution at which humanity observes the cosmos. And the telescope that takes her name intends to do something similar, but even better.<\/p>\n

\"NancyThe namesake of the new telescope, astronomer Nancy Grace Roman. Credit: NASA\/GSFC\/Bill Hrybyk <\/p>\n

Like the James Webb Space Telescope, Roman captures the universe in infrared light and will have an observation range at least 100 times larger than Hubble\u2019s. The telescope\u2019s mission is divided into three programs, all designed to best exploit the huge instrument\u2019s ability to investigate galaxies, exoplanets, supernovas, black holes, and more.<\/p>\n

Studying the cosmic void will be Roman\u2019s High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey (HLSS), which uses weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering to probe the origin of cosmic acceleration. During the telescope\u2019s lifetime, Roman should be able to detect and measure tens of thousands of cosmic voids, the researchers explained in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to detect voids, you have to be able to observe galaxies that are quite sparse and faint,\u201d Giulia Degni, study co-author and an astrophysicist at Roma Tre University in Italy, added in the statement. \u201cWith Roman, we can better look at the galaxies that populate voids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peering into the void <\/p>\n

Getting Roman data is the easy part. What comes next is a two-part analysis to reverse engineer the characteristics of dark energy, according to the researchers. Specifically, to determine the 3D shapes of the voids, researchers will tap into Roman data on the positions of galaxies and their cosmological redshift, or shifts in a galaxy\u2019s wavelengths as it moves away from us.<\/p>\n

Then, astronomers could make informed guesses about the strength and evolution of dark energy over astronomical time. The process is somewhat akin to piecing together an unknown cake recipe from the final product, Alice Pisani, study co-author and an astrophysicist at Princeton University, explained in the release.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou try to put in the right ingredients\u2014the right amount of matter, the right amount of dark energy\u2014and then you check whether your cake looks as it should,\u201d she said. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t, that means you put in the wrong ingredients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have your cosmic cake <\/p>\n

That may sound a bit arbitrary, but astronomers already rely on well-established mathematical models to guide them. According to such models, voids typically should be spherical, since the universe doesn\u2019t have a preferred location or direction. To test that theory, the researchers will statistically combine, or stack, the images of cosmic voids collected by Roman to look for consistent patterns.<\/p>\n

If the result isn\u2019t spherically symmetric, there\u2019s something wrong, either with the data or the \u201ccosmic recipe.\u201d And once researchers arrive at that contradictory conclusion, that\u2019s when humanity will have learned something new about the universe.<\/p>\n

\"RomanAn infographic depicting the capabilities of the Roman Telescope. Credit: NASA\/Goddard Space Flight Center <\/p>\n

That said, all this won\u2019t be for a while, since Roman is still getting some final work done in Maryland, and it\u2019ll be another few years before the data comes in. But now that we\u2019re fairly certain that Roman isn\u2019t canceled, I\u2019d say we\u2019re in for something exhilarating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, leaked budget cuts cast a dark shadow over the future of NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[13203,175510,718,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-352699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-dark-energy","9":"tag-nancy-roman-space-telescope","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}