The Euclid space telescope, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on July 1st, 2023, is now in Science Mode. It has recently captured images that bring us ever closer to understanding the mysteries of the dark universe. ESA's Director General Josef Aschbacher, and Director of Science Carole Mundell, recently announced these discoveries at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, on October 15th, 2024. This congress is one of the most significant events for the global space community, bringing together experts to discuss the latest advancements in space exploration and cosmology.
"The light from the Big Bang, known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), passes through the structures that Euclid is observing, collecting a unique record of these structures. This includes information on the mysterious Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which constitute the majority of the universe's substance, in the form of tiny deviations in its trajectory, as predicted by General Relativity." explains Carlo Baccigalupi, Builder Scientist for the Euclid Collaboration, and former coordinator of the Euclid Working Group (CMBX) which is responsible for measuring and interpreting the traces in the CMB which were imprinted by the cosmological structures that Euclid observes.
"We have powerful CMB probes currently in operation. The community of Astrophysicists and Cosmologists in Trieste, including researchers at SISSA and the Astronomical Observatory at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Trieste (INAF-TS), holds key roles in these efforts. They contribute to major projects like the South Pole Telescope and the Simons Observatory. These are capable of catching the tiny blurring that the structures observed by Euclid cause on the background light from the CMB, catching the properties of Dark Energy and Matter in the critical moment in which the cosmic expansion started to accelerate, possibly revealing unique cluse on what they are." Baccigalupi continues. "The expertise of scientists at SISSA and INAF-TS is based on the success of the Planck mission over the past decade. In the next one, even more powerful probes shall measure the CMB and the imprint of Euclid observed structure on it, in a combined network of detectors from the ground, the Enhanced Simons Observatory and CMB-Stage IV in the Atacama desert, in Chile, and one observatory in space, the LiteBIRD Satellite."
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