Cosmology - Blog Posts

hades-in-a-handbag

1 month ago

Matter cannot be created or destroyed.

that's the rule of the universe.

You've always existed in some way.

and no matter how many times you get blown apart;

The gravity of your atoms will drag you back together.

Tearing your self apart is futile.

It's nuclear fission.

You only salt the earth in your despair.

Tear open the black hole just for the gravity well to drag you under.

The only escape is expansion.

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poetry my poetry free form poetry cosmology

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bastard-in-armor

7 months ago

Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.❞ — Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate) OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE • Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge. • Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard. • Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” • Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne — after telling her not to publish). • Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work. • Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science. • Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her. (OP: Matthew Gardner)

(Continuation of post, full text in previous image)

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feminism physics science astronomy cosmology women in science mastodon cecilia payne

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nasa

8 months ago

A Tour of Cosmic Temperatures

We often think of space as “cold,” but its temperature can vary enormously depending on where you visit. If the difference between summer and winter on Earth feels extreme, imagine the range of temperatures between the coldest and hottest places in the universe — it’s trillions of degrees! So let’s take a tour of cosmic temperatures … from the coldest spots to the hottest temperatures yet achieved.

First, a little vocabulary: Astronomers use the Kelvin temperature scale, which is represented by the symbol K. Going up by 1 K is the same as going up 1°C, but the scale begins at 0 K, or -273°C, which is also called absolute zero. This is the temperature where the atoms in stuff stop moving. We’ll measure our temperatures in this tour in kelvins, but also convert them to make them more familiar!

We’ll start on the chilly end of the scale with our CAL (Cold Atom Lab) on the International Space Station, which can chill atoms to within one ten billionth of a degree above 0 K, just a fraction above absolute zero.

Cartoon of JAXA’s XRISM telescope gently rocking and back and forth on a dark blue background. The spacecraft has a roughly cylindrical body, which is depicted in light blue with various hardware shown as gray lines and shapes. Solar array "wings" extend on either side and a smaller, rounded cylindrical section pointing toward the right has small tubes extending from the end. Text above reads “XRISM’s Resolve sensor,” and text below says “0.05 K, -459.58°F (-273.10°C).”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Just slightly warmer is the Resolve sensor inside XRISM, pronounced “crism,” short for the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission. This is an international collaboration led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) with NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). Resolve operates at one twentieth of a degree above 0 K. Why? To measure the heat from individual X-rays striking its 36 pixels!

Cartoon of the Boomerang Nebula subtly shifting on a dark blue background. The nebula is depicted as layered blobs in different shades of pink. A small light pink oval is near the center, and the entire nebula is speckled with small white dots. Text above reads “Boomerang Nebula,” and text below says “1 K, -457.9°F (-272.2°C).”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Resolve and CAL are both colder than the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest known region in the cosmos at just 1 K! This cloud of dust and gas left over from a Sun-like star is about 5,000 light-years from Earth. Scientists are studying why it’s colder than the natural background temperature of deep space.

Cartoon of Neptune against a dark blue background. The planet is mostly a medium shade of blue with streaks of lighter and darker blues. Text above reads “Neptune,” and text below says “72 K, -330°F (-201°C).”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Let’s talk about some temperatures closer to home. Icy gas giant Neptune is the coldest major planet. It has an average temperature of 72 K at the height in its atmosphere where the pressure is equivalent to sea level on Earth. Explore how that compares to other objects in our solar system!

Cartoon of Death Valley in an oval inside a dark blue background. A yellow sun slowly sets in a golden sky behind abstract dark brown mountains. Text at the top of the scene reads “Death Valley,” and text below says “330 K, 134°F (56.7°C).”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

How about Earth? According to NOAA, Death Valley set the world’s surface air temperature record on July 10, 1913. This record of 330 K has yet to be broken — but recent heat waves have come close. (If you’re curious about the coldest temperature measured on Earth, that’d be 183.95 K (-128.6°F or -89.2°C) at Vostok Station, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.)

We monitor Earth's global average temperature to understand how our planet is changing due to human activities. Last year, 2023, was the warmest year on our record, which stretches back to 1880.

Cartoon of Earth against a deep purple background. The surface of Earth shows royal blue water and the green shapes of landforms. A triangular wedge has been removed from the side facing us, revealing the layers inside. The innermost layer is a blazing white, followed by yellow, orange, and red as they near the surface. Text above reads “Earth’s core,” and text below says “5,600 K, 10,000°F (5,300°C).”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

The inside of our planet is even hotter. Earth’s inner core is a solid sphere made of iron and nickel that’s about 759 miles (1,221 kilometers) in radius. It reaches temperatures up to 5,600 K.

Cartoon of Rigel and the constellation Orion against a deep purple background. On the right is a glowing light blue star with a slightly mottled surface that slowly spins. To its left is a pattern of dots connected with lines, showing the shape of Orion, which very loosely resembles a human with a bow. Rigel’s location is marked in the lower right of the constellation and connected to the larger star with a translucent triangle. Text above reads “Surface of Rigel,” and text below says “11,000 K, 20,000°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We might assume stars would be much hotter than our planet, but the surface of Rigel is only about twice the temperature of Earth’s core at 11,000 K. Rigel is a young, blue star in the constellation Orion, and one of the brightest stars in our night sky.

Cartoon of a cloud of ionized hydrogen against a purple background. Concentric magenta blobs fill the center of the image, getting lighter toward the center. A bright white point is slightly right of center, surrounded by a yellow-orange haze and X-shaped spikes of light. Text above reads “Hydrogen ionizes,” and text below says “158,000 K, 284,000°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We study temperatures on large and small scales. The electrons in hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, can be stripped away from their atoms in a process called ionization at a temperature around 158,000 K. When these electrons join back up with ionized atoms, light is produced. Ionization is what makes some clouds of gas and dust, like the Orion Nebula, glow.

Cartoon of the Sun and its corona against a dark purple background. The Sun is a glowing yellow circle at the center, surrounded by wispy white streaks extending outward that gently wave, representing the corona. Occasionally, smaller white filaments travel inward or outward along very subtle white lines that curve around the Sun, depicting its magnetic field. Text above reads “Solar corona,” and text below says “3 million K, 5.4 million°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We already talked about the temperature on a star’s surface, but the material surrounding a star gets much, much hotter! Our Sun’s surface is about 5,800 K (10,000°F or 5,500°C), but the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, called the corona, can reach millions of kelvins.

Our Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona in 2021, helping us answer questions like why it is so much hotter than the Sun's surface. This is one of the mysteries of the Sun that solar scientists have been trying to figure out for years.

Cartoon of a galaxy cluster against a bright purple background. The cluster is depicted as a dozen orange and yellow ovals and abstract spiral galaxies within a cloud in shades of brown with a small tan blob at its center. Text above reads “Perseus galaxy cluster,” and text below says “50 million K, 90 million°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Looking for a hotter spot? Located about 240 million light-years away, the Perseus galaxy cluster contains thousands of galaxies. It’s surrounded by a vast cloud of gas heated up to tens of millions of kelvins that glows in X-ray light. Our telescopes found a giant wave rolling through this cluster’s hot gas, likely due to a smaller cluster grazing it billions of years ago.

Cartoon of layers of material slowly expanding after a supernova explosion against a bright purple background. A bright central dot represents the exploding star, which is surrounded by concentric spiky layers in different shades of pink and purple. Text above reads “Supernova shell,” and text below says “300 million K, 550 million°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Now things are really starting to heat up! When massive stars — ones with eight times the mass of our Sun or more — run out of fuel, they put on a show. On their way to becoming black holes or neutron stars, these stars will shed their outer layers in a supernova explosion. These layers can reach temperatures of 300 million K!

Cartoon of material swirling around a black hole, our view distorted by strong gravity, against a deep purple background. The center of the image is a black hole, with a thin ring of orange around it, then a small gap, and then a striped disk of material. The disk in front of the black hole appears as we would expect, with the disk arcing in front of the black hole like a flat pancake. However, the far side of the disk is visible above and below the black hole, instead of being blocked by it. This is due to the black hole’s gravity, which redirects the light on its path to us. Text above reads “Black hole corona,” and text below says “1 billion K, 1.8 billion°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

We couldn’t explore cosmic temperatures without talking about black holes. When stuff gets too close to a black hole, it can become part of a hot, orbiting debris disk with a conical corona swirling above it. As the material churns, it heats up and emits light, making it glow. This hot environment, which can reach temperatures of a billion kelvins, helps us find and study black holes even though they don’t emit light themselves.

JAXA’s XRISM telescope, which we mentioned at the start of our tour, uses its supercool Resolve detector to explore the scorching conditions around these intriguing, extreme objects.

Cartoon of the moments of the universe after the big bang, against a pinkish-purple background. A blazing blob of white fills the center of the image, surrounded by a halo of bright pink, with spikes of magenta extending in all directions. Text above reads “Universe's first second,” and text below says “10 billion K, 18 billion°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

Our universe’s origins are even hotter. Just one second after the big bang, our tiny, baby universe consisted of an extremely hot — around 10 billion K — “soup” of light and particles. It had to cool for a few minutes before the first elements could form. The oldest light we can see, the cosmic microwave background, is from about 380,000 years after the big bang, and shows us the heat left over from these earlier moments.

Cartoon of a plasma formed within CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, against a purple background. A blue spherical cloud slowly expands at the center of the image, electric blue on the outside and a deeper blue at the center. Blue lines and dots surround this cloud, moving outward as it becomes larger. Text above reads “Large Hadron Collider,” and text below says “5.5 trillion K, 9.9 trillion°F.”

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We’ve ventured far in distance and time … but the final spot on our temperature adventure is back on Earth! Scientists use the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to smash teensy particles together at superspeeds to simulate the conditions of the early universe. In 2012, they generated a plasma that was over 5 trillion K, setting a world record for the highest human-made temperature.

Want this tour as a poster? You can download it here in a vertical or horizontal version!

The background of this infographic is dominated by a long line, snaking from the upper right to the lower left in a giant "S." The line has temperatures marked from 0 at the bottom to 10-to-the-12 at the top. The guide is built around the Kelvin, the absolute temperature scale used by scientists. There are markings for each power of 10 at regular intervals. Each of the text elements is accompanied by a stylistic drawing. Some of the elements marked are: Large Hadron Collider, 5.5 trillion K (highest temperature measured); Universe’s first second, 10 billion K; Black hole corona, 1 billion K (plasma around accreting black holes); Solar corona, 3 million K; Earth’s core, 5,600 K; Death Valley, 330 K (Earth’s highest natural surface temperature); Neptune, 72 K (average atmospheric temperature at 1 bar level); Boomerang Nebula, 1 K (coldest-known natural environment); XRISM’s Resolve sensor operates at 0.05 K; Absolute zero, 0 K.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Explore the wonderful and weird cosmos with NASA Universe on X, Facebook, and Instagram. And make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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nasa

9 months ago

Many thousands of galaxies speckle the black screen. The galaxies cluster in the center of the image where they are larger. Several fuzzy yellow galaxies make up the center of the cluster. These galaxies look like soft glowing dust balls, with no defined structure. Hundreds of streaks surround the center of the cluster, as if someone smudged the galaxies’ light in a circular pattern. Thousands of smaller galaxies dot the whole image, like individual specks of dust. These small galaxies vary in size, shape, and color, ranging from red to blue. The different colors are dispersed randomly across the image — there is no apparent patterning or clustering of red or blue galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Observations from both NASA’s James Webb and Hubble space telescopes created this colorful image of galaxy cluster MACS0416. The colors of different galaxies indicate distances, with bluer galaxies being closer and redder galaxies being more distant or dusty. Some galaxies appear as streaks due to gravitational lensing — a warping effect caused by large masses gravitationally bending the space that light travels through.

Like Taylor Swift, Our Universe Has Gone Through Many Different Eras

While Taylor's Eras Tour explores decades of music, our universe’s eras set the stage for life to exist today. By unraveling cosmic history, scientists can investigate how it happened, from the universe’s origin and evolution to its possible fate.

A navy blue rectangle forms the background of an infographic. In the top left corner, it says, “History of the Universe.”  An elongated conical shape spans the width of the image. The smaller end of the horn, beginning at a miniscule point, is on the left side of the image and the wider end is on the right. The outline of the horn quickly expands, tracing out the left end of the horn to be about a quarter of the height of the image. The bell shape gradually grows wider as it approaches the right side of the image. The rightmost side of the horn flares outward like a bell. From the left to the right of the horn are 8 ovals that appear to subdivide it. The first oval contains light blue blobs on a dark blue background. Beneath it, it says, “10^-32 seconds, Inflation, initial expansion.” The second oval contains a light blue fog, blue and white orbs, and short, tightly zig-zagged blue lines. Half the white orbs have plus signs, and half have minus signs on them. Beneath the second oval, it says, “1 microsecond, First Particles, neutrons, protons, and electrons form.” The third oval contains a similar blue fog, but the white and blue orbs are stuck to one another in small clusters with no positive or negative signs. The zig-zagged lines remain. Beneath the third oval, it says, “3 minutes, First Nuclei, helium and hydrogen form.” The fourth oval contains a light blue background with some darker blue speckling on it, like on a fresh brown egg. In front of the background are several small spheres. Each sphere is either surrounded by one or two oval outlines. For the spheres with two ovals, the ovals are the same size but are perpendicular to one another. On each oval, in both cases, is a single dot which intersects with the line of the oval as if it traces an orbital. There are still a couple of zig-zagged lines, though much less than in the previous two ovals. Beneath the fourth oval, it says, “380,000 years, First Light, the first atoms form.” The fifth oval contains a blue camouflage-like pattern with a few white dots. Beneath it, it says, “200 million years, First Stars, gas and dust condense into stars.” The sixth oval contains a similar blue camouflage pattern, though it appears to be more transparent. There are several white dots, more than in the fifth oval, and a few white spiral shapes dispersed throughout. Underneath, it says, “400 million years, Galaxies & Dark Matter, galaxies form in dark matter cradles.” In the seventh oval, the blue camouflage pattern has faded, leaving behind a dark blue background with some very thin fog. There are several white dots and white spirals. Beneath the seventh oval, it says, “10 billion years, Dark Energy, expansion accelerates.” The eighth oval is similar to the seventh oval — it features a dark blue background with some thin haze, tens of white dots of varying size, and several spiral shapes of varying size. However, the eighth oval is considerably larger than the rest of the ovals, as it rests at the very end of the flare of the bell shape. Beneath the eighth oval, it says, “13.8 billion years, Today, humans observe the universe.” Credit: NASA

This infographic outlines the history of the universe.

0 SECONDS | In the beginning, the universe debuted extremely small, hot, and dense

Scientists aren’t sure what exactly existed at the very beginning of the universe, but they think there wasn’t any normal matter or physics. Things probably didn’t behave like we expect them to today.

A small flash of white light appears in the middle of a completely black image. The flash expands rapidly, glowing purple and consuming the entire image. The white light shrinks, returning to a pinprick at the center of the image. As it collapses, purple streams and waves pulse outward from the white light’s center. Alongside the waves flow hundreds of small galaxies — spiral and spherical collections of dots of light. The galaxies race out from the center, starting as miniscule specks and becoming larger blobs and smudges as they draw closer, speckling the screen. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

Artist's interpretation of the beginning of the universe, with representations of the early cosmos and its expansion.

10^-32 SECONDS | The universe rapidly, fearless-ly inflated

When the universe debuted, it almost immediately became unstable. Space expanded faster than the speed of light during a very brief period known as inflation. Scientists are still exploring what drove this exponential expansion.

1 MICROSECOND | Inflation’s end started the story of us: we wouldn’t be here if inflation continued

When inflation ended, the universe continued to expand, but much slower. All the energy that previously drove the rapid expansion went into light and matter — normal stuff! Small subatomic particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons — now floated around, though the universe was too hot for them to combine and form atoms.

The particles gravitated together, especially in clumpy spots. The push and pull between gravity and the particles’ inability to stick together created oscillations, or sound waves.

In front of a dark blue background, hundreds of small red and blue spheres float around, at varying distances from the viewer. In the middle of the screen, two large red and blue spheres collide in the foreground. As they collide, a white flash of light radiates outward. As it fades, the two spheres become visible again, now stuck together. After the first collision, several similar collisions and white flashes are visible in the background. In the top left corner, a clump with one blue sphere and one red sphere races towards another clump with two red spheres and one blue sphere. They collide and there is a flash of white light. As the light clears, a clump with two red spheres and two blue spheres is visible in its place, and a single red sphere floats away toward the center of the screen. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Artist's interpretation of protons and neutrons colliding to form ionized deuterium — a hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron — and ionized helium — two protons and two neutrons.

THREE MINUTES | Protons and neutrons combined all too well

After about three minutes, the universe had expanded and cooled enough for protons and neutrons to stick together. This created the very first elements: hydrogen, helium, and very small amounts of lithium and beryllium.

But it was still too hot for electrons to combine with the protons and neutrons. These free electrons floated around in a hot foggy soup that scattered light and made the universe appear dark.

In a fuzzy gray fog, hundreds of medium-sized red spheres and small green spheres wiggle around, never moving farther than one diameter from their original position. Hundreds of glowing blue daggers of light bounce between the different spheres, changing direction when they collide with them. Suddenly, the red and green spheres combine, turning brown. The daggers no longer collide with the spheres and instead race away in every direction into open space. A single glowing blue dagger of light zooms away from the spheres and fog into an open blackness speckled with thousands of tiny stars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This animated artist’s concept begins by showing ionized atoms (red blobs), free electrons (green blobs), and photons of light (blue flashes). The ionized atoms scattered light until neutral atoms (shown as brown blobs) formed, clearing the way for light to travel farther through space.

380 THOUSAND YEARS | Neutral atoms formed and left a blank space for light

As the universe expanded and cooled further, electrons joined atoms and made them neutral. With the electron plasma out of the way, some light could travel much farther.

A wide oval stretches across a rectangular black background. The oval is about twice as wide as it is tall. It is covered in speckles of varying colors from blue to yellow and red. The colors group together to form large splotches of reds, oranges, and yellows, as well as other splotches of blues and greens. In the bottom left corner, there is a horizontal rectangle with a spectrum of colors, with blue on the left, yellow in the center, and red on the right. Above the rectangle is a label reading “temperature.” Below the rectangle, on the left side under the blue is a label reading, “cooler.” On the right side, under the red, is a label reading “warmer.” Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

An image of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) across the entire sky, taken by ESA's (European Space Agency) Planck space telescope. The CMB is the oldest light we can observe in the universe. Frozen sound waves are visible as miniscule fluctuations in temperature, shown through blue (colder) and red (warmer) coloring.

As neutral atoms formed, the sound waves created by the push and pull between subatomic particles stopped. The waves froze, leaving ripples that were slightly denser than their surroundings. The excess matter attracted even more matter, both normal and “dark.” Dark matter has gravitational influence on its surroundings but is invisible and does not interact with light.

In front of a navy-blue background, tens of light blue orbs float at varying sizes, representing varying distances from the viewer. There are three large blue orbs in the foreground, with small plus signs at their centers. Several yellow streaks of light race across the screen. As the streaks collide with blue orbs, the orbs flash and grow slightly larger, absorbing the yellow streaks, before returning to their original state. The yellow streaks of light do not re-emerge from the orbs. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This animation illustrates the absorption of photons — light particles — by neutral hydrogen atoms.

ALSO 380 THOUSAND YEARS | The universe became dark — call it what you want, but scientists call this time period the Dark Ages 

Other than the cosmic microwave background, there wasn't much light during this era since stars hadn’t formed yet. And what light there was usually didn't make it very far since neutral hydrogen atoms are really good at absorbing light. This kicked off an era known as the cosmic dark ages.

A dense orange fog floats in front of a black background that is just barely visible through the thick fog. There are dozens of glowing purple orbs within the fog, clustered in a circle in the center of the visual. One by one, the purple orbs send out bright white circular flashes of light. Following each flash of light, a white ring expands outward from the center of the orb, before fading away once its diameter reaches about one sixth of the image size. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This animation illustrates the beginning of star formation as gas begins to clump due to gravity. These protostars heat up as material compresses inside them and throw off material at high speeds, creating shockwaves shown here as expanding rings of light.

200 MILLION YEARS | Stars created daylight (that was still blocked by hydrogen atoms)

Over time, denser areas pulled in more and more matter, in some places becoming so heavy it triggered a collapse. When the matter fell inward, it became hot enough for nuclear fusion to start, marking the birth of the first stars!

In front of a black background, there are millions of glowing green dots. They form a fine, wispy web stretching across the image, like old cobwebs that have collected dust. Over time, more dots collect at the vertices of the web. As the web gets thicker and thicker, the vertices grow and start moving towards each other and towards the center. The smaller dots circle the clumps, like bees buzzing around a hive, until they are pulled inward to join them. Eventually, the clumps merge to create a glowing green mass. The central mass ensnares more dots, coercing even those from the farthest reaches of the screen to circle it. Credit: Simulation: Wu, Hahn, Wechsler, Abel (KIPAC), Visualization: Kaehler (KIPAC)

A simulation of dark matter forming structure due to gravity.

400 MILLION YEARS | Dark matter acted like an invisible string tying galaxies together

As the universe expanded, the frozen sound waves created earlier — which now included stars, gas, dust, and more elements produced by stars — stretched and continued attracting more mass. Pulling material together eventually formed the first galaxies, galaxy clusters, and wide-scale, web-like structure.

A borderless three-dimensional cube rotates from left to right in front of a black background. In the cube are many organic cloud-like blobs. They are primarily purplish blue and black, with the centers being darker than the outsides. In the space between the clouds is a light blue translucent material through which more blobs can be seen further back in the cube. As the cube rotates, the blobs become increasingly red and the blue translucent material becomes increasingly see through. After becoming bright red, the blobs start to fade and become a translucent yellow fog before disappearing completely. As they fade, millions of small yellow-ish stars become visible. The stars dot the cube in every dimension. Credit: M. Alvarez, R. Kaehler and T. Abel

In this animation, ultraviolet light from stars ionizes hydrogen atoms by breaking off their electrons. Regions already ionized are blue and translucent, areas undergoing ionization are red and white, and regions of neutral gas are dark and opaque.

1 BILLION YEARS | Ultraviolet light from stars made the universe transparent for evermore

The first stars were massive and hot, meaning they burned their fuel supplies quickly and lived short lives. However, they gave off energetic ultraviolet light that helped break apart the neutral hydrogen around the stars and allowed light to travel farther.

An animation on a black rectangular background. On the left of the visual is a graph constructed with blue text and the line on the graph. The y-axis of the graph reads “Expansion Speed.” The x-axis is labeled “Time.” At the origin, the x-axis reads, “10 billion years ago.” Halfway across the x-axis is labeled “7 Billion years ago.” At the end of the x-axis is labeled “now.” On the graph is a line which draws itself out. It starts at the top of the y-axis. It slopes down to the right, linearly, as if it were going to draw a straight line from the top left corner of the graph to the bottom right corner of the graph. Around the 7-billion mark, the line begins to decrease in slope very gradually. Three quarters of the way across the x-axis and three quarters of the way down the y-axis, the line reaches a minimum, before quickly curving upwards. It rapidly slopes upward, reaching one quarter from the top of the y-axis as it reaches the end of the x-axis labeled “now.” At the same time, on the right hand of the visual is a tiny dark blue sphere which holds within it glowing lighter blue spheres — galaxies and stars — and a lighter blue webbing. As the line crawls across the graph, the sphere expands. At first, its swelling gently slows, corresponding to the decreasing line on the graph. As the line reaches its minimum and the slope decreases, the sphere slows down its expansion further. Then, as the line arcs back upward, the sphere expands rapidly until it grows larger than the right half of the image and encroaches on the graph. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Animation showing a graph of the universe’s expansion over time. While cosmic expansion slowed following the end of inflation, it began picking up the pace around 5 billion years ago. Scientists still aren't sure why.

SOMETIME AFTER 10 BILLION YEARS | Dark energy became dominant, accelerating cosmic expansion and creating a big question…?

By studying the universe’s expansion rate over time, scientists made the shocking discovery that it’s speeding up. They had thought eventually gravity should cause the matter to attract itself and slow down expansion. Some mysterious pressure, dubbed dark energy, seems to be accelerating cosmic expansion. About 10 billion years into the universe’s story, dark energy – whatever it may be – became dominant over matter.

A small blue sphere hangs in front of inky blackness. The lower half of the sphere is shrouded in shadow, making it appear hemispherical. The sphere is a rich blue, with swirling white patterns across it — Earth. In the foreground of the image is a gray horizon, covered in small craters and divots — the Moon. Credit: NASA

An image of Earth rising in the Moon’s sky. Nicknamed “Earthrise,” Apollo 8 astronauts saw this sight during the first crewed mission to the Moon.

13.8 BILLION YEARS | The universe as we know it today: 359,785,714,285.7 fortnights from the beginning

We owe our universe today to each of its unique stages. However, scientists still have many questions about these eras.

Our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will look back in time to explore cosmic mysteries like dark energy and dark matter – two poorly understood aspects of the universe that govern its evolution and ultimate fate.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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space Youtube taylor swift the eras tour science nasa astronomy stem telescope cosmology Roman Space Telescope Nancy Grace Roman

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nasa

1 year ago

Many thousands of bright stars speckle the screen. The smallest ones are white pinpoints, strewn across the screen like spilled salt. Larger ones are yellow and bluish white with spiky outer edges like sea urchins. Credit: Matthew Penny (Louisiana State University)

A simulated image of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s future observations toward the center of our galaxy, spanning less than 1 percent of the total area of Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey. The simulated stars were drawn from the Besançon Galactic Model.

Exploring the Changing Universe with the Roman Space Telescope

The view from your backyard might paint the universe as an unchanging realm, where only twinkling stars and nearby objects, like satellites and meteors, stray from the apparent constancy. But stargazing through NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will offer a front row seat to a dazzling display of cosmic fireworks sparkling across the sky.

Roman will view extremely faint infrared light, which has longer wavelengths than our eyes can see. Two of the mission’s core observing programs will monitor specific patches of the sky. Stitching the results together like stop-motion animation will create movies that reveal changing objects and fleeting events that would otherwise be hidden from our view.

Watch this video to learn about time-domain astronomy and how time will be a key element in NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s galactic bulge survey. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This type of science, called time-domain astronomy, is difficult for telescopes that have smaller views of space. Roman’s large field of view will help us see huge swaths of the universe. Instead of always looking at specific things and events astronomers have already identified, Roman will be able to repeatedly observe large areas of the sky to catch phenomena scientists can't predict. Then astronomers can find things no one knew were there!

One of Roman’s main surveys, the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, will monitor hundreds of millions of stars toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will see many of the stars appear to flash or flicker over time.

This animation illustrates the concept of gravitational microlensing. When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star are bent due to the warped space-time around the foreground star. The closer star is then a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star, so we refer to the foreground star as the lens star. If the lens star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short change in the brightness of the source. Thus, we discover the presence of each exoplanet, and measure its mass and how far it is from its star. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

That can happen when something like a star or planet moves in front of a background star from our point of view. Because anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time, light from the distant star bends around the nearer object as it passes by. That makes the nearer object act as a natural magnifying glass, creating a temporary spike in the brightness of the background star’s light. That signal lets astronomers know there’s an intervening object, even if they can’t see it directly.

A galaxy with a large, warmly glowing circular center and several purplish spiral arms extending outward, wrapped around the center like a cinnamon roll. Stars speckle the entire galaxy, but they are most densely packed near the center where they're yellower. Toward the outer edges, the stars are whiter. Overlaid on top of the galaxy is a small pink outline of a spacecraft located a little more than halfway out toward the bottom edge of the galaxy. A reddish search beam extends across the galaxy through its center, about to the same point on the opposite side. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

This artist’s concept shows the region of the Milky Way NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will cover – relatively uncharted territory when it comes to planet-finding. That’s important because the way planets form and evolve may be different depending on where in the galaxy they’re located. Our solar system is situated near the outskirts of the Milky Way, about halfway out on one of the galaxy’s spiral arms. A recent Kepler Space Telescope study showed that stars on the fringes of the Milky Way possess fewer of the most common planet types that have been detected so far. Roman will search in the opposite direction, toward the center of the galaxy, and could find differences in that galactic neighborhood, too.

Using this method, called microlensing, Roman will likely set a new record for the farthest-known exoplanet. That would offer a glimpse of a different galactic neighborhood that could be home to worlds quite unlike the more than 5,500 that are currently known. Roman’s microlensing observations will also find starless planets, black holes, neutron stars, and more!

This animation shows a planet crossing in front of, or transiting, its host star and the corresponding light curve astronomers would see. Using this technique, scientists anticipate NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find 100,000 new worlds. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR)

Stars Roman sees may also appear to flicker when a planet crosses in front of, or transits, its host star as it orbits. Roman could find 100,000 planets this way! Small icy objects that haunt the outskirts of our own solar system, known as Kuiper belt objects, may occasionally pass in front of faraway stars Roman sees, too. Astronomers will be able to see how much water the Kuiper belt objects have because the ice absorbs specific wavelengths of infrared light, providing a “fingerprint” of its presence. This will give us a window into our solar system’s early days.

A fiery orange globe appears at the left of a white disk of spinning material. As the disk spins, it draws material from the orange globe. Then suddenly the center of the white disk grows extremely bright as a sphere of white blossoms outward. The explosive white sphere then expands, quickly encompassing the whole screen in white criss-crossed with purplish gray filaments. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI

This animation visualizes a type Ia supernova.

Roman’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey will look beyond our galaxy to hunt for type Ia supernovas. These exploding stars originate from some binary star systems that contain at least one white dwarf – the small, hot core remnant of a Sun-like star. In some cases, the dwarf may siphon material from its companion. This triggers a runaway reaction that ultimately detonates the thief once it reaches a specific point where it has gained so much mass that it becomes unstable.

NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see thousands of exploding stars called supernovae across vast stretches of time and space. Using these observations, astronomers aim to shine a light on several cosmic mysteries, providing a window onto the universe’s distant past. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Since these rare explosions each peak at a similar, known intrinsic brightness, astronomers can use them to determine how far away they are by simply measuring how bright they appear. Astronomers will use Roman to study the light of these supernovas to find out how quickly they appear to be moving away from us.

By comparing how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists can trace cosmic expansion over time. This will help us understand whether and how dark energy – the unexplained pressure thought to speed up the universe’s expansion – has changed throughout the history of the universe.

Left of center, two bright blue circular shapes appear to be joined toward the center of the frame. They are whitest on their outermost edges. Debris, also white and bright blue, emanates outward and extends all around the frame. The background is black. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey the same areas of the sky every few days. Researchers will mine this data to identify kilonovas – explosions that happen when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole collide and merge. When these collisions happen, a fraction of the resulting debris is ejected as jets, which move near the speed of light. The remaining debris produces hot, glowing, neutron-rich clouds that forge heavy elements, like gold and platinum. Roman’s extensive data will help astronomers better identify how often these events occur, how much energy they give off, and how near or far they are.

And since this survey will repeatedly observe the same large vista of space, scientists will also see sporadic events like neutron stars colliding and stars being swept into black holes. Roman could even find new types of objects and events that astronomers have never seen before!

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1 year ago

Black Hole Friday Deals!

Ad-style comic titled “Black Hole Friday Sales.” Middle of the page “Out-of-this-world deals!” Scattered throughout are illustrated “coupons.” From top to bottom, the taglines read: “Free travel guide to planning your next black hole vacation (when you purchase a cosmic timeshare)”; “Add some planets to your system with this exoplanet bundle!”; “Accretion disk skirt: Be the center of attention. Made of 100% recycled material”; “Standard candles: Reliably bright. Non-scented. Long-lasting burn”; Stephan’s Quintet: A 5-for-1 galactic deal”; “Black hole merger: Get ready to ride this (gravitational) wave before this deal ends”; “Widow system: Act quickly before these stars disappear!”; “Black holes: the perfect (permanent) storage solution”; “Spaghettify! Noodles: Feed the black hole of your stomach”; and “Ready Space Player One. Limited time offer: Roman Space Observer Black Hole DLC! This weekend only!” At the bottom “Get these deals before they disappear beyond the point of no return."

Get these deals before they are sucked into a black hole and gone forever! This “Black Hole Friday,” we have some cosmic savings that are sure to be out of this world.

Your classic black holes — the ultimate storage solution.

Galactic 5-for-1 special! Learn more about Stephan’s Quintet.

Limited-time offer game DLC! Try your hand at the Roman Space Observer Video Game, Black Hole edition, available this weekend only.

Standard candles: Exploding stars that are reliably bright. Multi-functional — can be used to measure distances in space!

Feed the black hole in your stomach. Spaghettification’s on the menu.

Act quickly before the stars in this widow system are gone!

Add some planets to your solar system! Grab our Exoplanet Bundle.

Get ready to ride this (gravitational) wave before this Black Hole Merger ends!

Be the center of attention in this stylish accretion disk skirt. Made of 100% recycled cosmic material.

Should you ever travel to a black hole? No. But if you do, here’s a free guide to make your trip as safe* as possible. *Note: black holes are never safe.

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1 year ago

Vibrantly hued shapes speckle an image with a black background. Orbs glowing red, yellow, and blue are strewn across the frame, and a large, translucent blue haze dominates most of the center. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Brodwin (University of Missouri)

Astronomers used three of NASA's Great Observatories to capture this multiwavelength image showing galaxy cluster IDCS J1426.5+3508. It includes X-rays recorded by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, visible light observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in green, and infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope in red. This rare galaxy cluster has important implications for understanding how these megastructures formed and evolved early in the universe.

How Astronomers Time Travel

Let’s add another item to your travel bucket list: the early universe! You don’t need the type of time machine you see in sci-fi movies, and you don’t have to worry about getting trapped in the past. You don’t even need to leave the comfort of your home! All you need is a powerful space-based telescope.

But let’s start small and work our way up to the farthest reaches of space. We’ll explain how it all works along the way.

This animation shows a small, blue planet Earth at the left of the frame and an even smaller white dot representing the Moon at the right. The background is black. A beam of light travels back and forth between them. The graphic is labeled “Earth and Moon to scale, Speed of light in real-time, surface-to-surface in 1.255 seconds, average distance 384,400 km.” Credit: James O'Donoghue, used with permission

This animation illustrates how fast light travels between Earth and the Moon. The farther light has to travel, the more noticeable its speed limit becomes.

The speed of light is superfast, but it isn’t infinite. It travels at about 186,000 miles (300 million meters) per second. That means that it takes time for the light from any object to reach our eyes. The farther it is, the more time it takes.

You can see nearby things basically in real time because the light travel time isn’t long enough to make a difference. Even if an object is 100 miles (161 kilometers) away, it takes just 0.0005 seconds for light to travel that far. But on astronomical scales, the effects become noticeable.

The Sun and planets are lined up along the center of the frame with distances shown to scale. The title is “The Solar System: with real-time speed of light.” Earth is labeled 1 AU, 8 minutes 17 seconds; Jupiter is 5.2 AU, 43 minutes 17 seconds; Saturn is 9.6 AU, 1 hour 20 minutes; Uranus is 19.2 AU, 2 hours 40 minutes; and Neptune is 30 AU, 4 hours 10 minutes. The bottom of the graphic says, “1 AU (astronomical unit) = 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.” Credit: James O'Donoghue, used with permission

This infographic shows how long it takes light to travel to different planets in our solar system.

Within our solar system, light’s speed limit means it can take a while to communicate back and forth between spacecraft and ground stations on Earth. We see the Moon, Sun, and planets as they were slightly in the past, but it's not usually far enough back to be scientifically interesting.

As we peer farther out into our galaxy, we use light-years to talk about distances. Smaller units like miles or kilometers would be too overwhelming and we’d lose a sense of their meaning. One light-year – the distance light travels in a year – is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). And that’s just a tiny baby step into the cosmos.

The Sun’s closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away. That means we see it as it was about four years ago. Betelgeuse, a more distant (and more volatile) stellar neighbor, is around 700 light-years away. Because of light’s lag time, astronomers don’t know for sure whether this supergiant star is still there! It may have already blasted itself apart in a supernova explosion – but it probably has another 10,000 years or more to go.

$An undulating, translucent star-forming region in the Carina Nebula, hued in ambers and blues. Foreground stars with diffraction spikes can be seen, as can a speckling of background points of light through the cloudy nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI$

What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth.

The Carina Nebula clocks in at 7,500 light-years away, which means the light we receive from it today began its journey about 3,000 years before the pyramids of Giza in Egypt were built! Many new stars there have undoubtedly been born by now, but their light may not reach Earth for thousands of years.

Glowing spiral arms are twisted around like a cosmic cinnamon roll. A bright yellow oval is diagonal in the center of the frame, and sprays of stars extend outward from it like tentacles. Pink, white, and blue stars speckle the spiral arms and dusty lanes lie in between. The glowing arms are streaked with smaller clumps of dust. Credit: NASA and Nick Risinger

An artist’s concept of our Milky Way galaxy, with rough locations for the Sun and Carina nebula marked.

If we zoom way out, you can see that 7,500 light-years away is still pretty much within our neighborhood. Let’s look further back in time…

$Spiral galaxy NGC 5643 with a bright, barred center surrounded by an orange-y glow. Vaguely purplish swirling arms extend outward from the center and appear somewhat mottled as streams of dust block white and blue stars in the arms here and there. A few stars are each surrounded by many sharp diffraction spikes. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Riess et al.; acknowledgement: Mahdi Zamani$

This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643. Looking this good isn’t easy; 30 different exposures, for a total of nine hours of observation time, together with Hubble’s high resolution and clarity, were needed to produce an image of such exquisite detail and beauty.

Peering outside our Milky Way galaxy transports us much further into the past. The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor, is about 2.5 million light-years away. And that’s still pretty close, as far as the universe goes. The image above shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is about 60 million light-years away! That means we see it as it was about 60 million years ago.

As telescopes look deeper into the universe, they capture snapshots in time from different cosmic eras. Astronomers can stitch those snapshots together to unravel things like galaxy evolution. The closest ones are more mature; we see them nearly as they truly are in the present day because their light doesn’t have to travel as far to reach us. We can’t rewind those galaxies (or our own), but we can get clues about how they likely developed. Looking at galaxies that are farther and farther away means seeing these star cities in ever earlier stages of development.

The farthest galaxies we can see are both old and young. They’re billions of years old now, and the light we receive from them is ancient since it took so long to traverse the cosmos. But since their light was emitted when the galaxies were young, it gives us a view of their infancy.

The animation begins with a tiny dot of purplish light which quickly explodes, with a flash of light blossoming out to cover the whole frame. The light subsides and the screen shows galaxies of smudgy or spiral shapes racing outward from the center of the frame. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This animation is an artist’s concept of the big bang, with representations of the early universe and its expansion.

Comparing how fast objects at different distances are moving away opened up the biggest mystery in modern astronomy: cosmic acceleration. The universe was already expanding as a result of the big bang, but astronomers expected it to slow down over time. Instead, it’s speeding up!

The universe’s expansion makes it tricky to talk about the distances of the farthest objects. We often use lookback time, which is the amount of time it took for an object’s light to reach us. That’s simpler than using a literal distance, because an object that was 10 billion light-years away when it emitted the light we received from it would actually be more than 16 billion light-years away right now, due to the expansion of space. We can even see objects that are presently over 30 billion light-years from Earth, even though the universe is only about 14 billion years old.

$Hundreds of red, yellow, white, and blue galaxies are sprinkled across a black background, appearing as small, brightly colored smudges. The tiniest galaxies appear as mere dots, while larger ones are disk-shaped. One blue star with six diffraction spikes shines in the lower-left corner. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani (ESA/Webb). Science: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), and the JADES Collaboration$

This James Webb Space Telescope image shines with the light from galaxies that are more than 13.4 billion years old, dating back to less than 400 million years after the big bang.

Our James Webb Space Telescope has helped us time travel back more than 13.4 billion years, to when the universe was less than 400 million years old. When our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches in a few years, astronomers will pair its vast view of space with Webb’s zooming capabilities to study the early universe in better ways than ever before. And don’t worry – these telescopes will make plenty of pit stops along the way at other exciting cosmic destinations across space and time.

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2 years ago

Caution: Universe Work Ahead 🚧

We only have one universe. That’s usually plenty – it’s pretty big after all! But there are some things scientists can’t do with our real universe that they can do if they build new ones using computers.

The universes they create aren’t real, but they’re important tools to help us understand the cosmos. Two teams of scientists recently created a couple of these simulations to help us learn how our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope sets out to unveil the universe’s distant past and give us a glimpse of possible futures.

Caution: you are now entering a cosmic construction zone (no hard hat required)!

A black square covered in thousands of tiny red dots and thousands more slightly larger, white and yellow fuzzy blobs. Each speck is a simulated galaxy. Credit: M. Troxel and Caltech-IPAC/R. Hurt

This simulated Roman deep field image, containing hundreds of thousands of galaxies, represents just 1.3 percent of the synthetic survey, which is itself just one percent of Roman's planned survey. The full simulation is available here. The galaxies are color coded – redder ones are farther away, and whiter ones are nearer. The simulation showcases Roman’s power to conduct large, deep surveys and study the universe statistically in ways that aren’t possible with current telescopes.

One Roman simulation is helping scientists plan how to study cosmic evolution by teaming up with other telescopes, like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. It’s based on galaxy and dark matter models combined with real data from other telescopes. It envisions a big patch of the sky Roman will survey when it launches by 2027. Scientists are exploring the simulation to make observation plans so Roman will help us learn as much as possible. It’s a sneak peek at what we could figure out about how and why our universe has changed dramatically across cosmic epochs.

This video begins by showing the most distant galaxies in the simulated deep field image in red. As it zooms out, layers of nearer (yellow and white) galaxies are added to the frame. By studying different cosmic epochs, Roman will be able to trace the universe's expansion history, study how galaxies developed over time, and much more.

As part of the real future survey, Roman will study the structure and evolution of the universe, map dark matter – an invisible substance detectable only by seeing its gravitational effects on visible matter – and discern between the leading theories that attempt to explain why the expansion of the universe is speeding up. It will do it by traveling back in time…well, sort of.

Seeing into the past

Looking way out into space is kind of like using a time machine. That’s because the light emitted by distant galaxies takes longer to reach us than light from ones that are nearby. When we look at farther galaxies, we see the universe as it was when their light was emitted. That can help us see billions of years into the past. Comparing what the universe was like at different ages will help astronomers piece together the way it has transformed over time.

The animation starts with a deep field image of the universe, showing warm toned galaxies as small specks dusted on a black backdrop. Then the center is distorted as additional layers of galaxies are added. The center appears to bulge toward the viewer, and galaxies are enlarged and smeared into arcs. Credit: Caltech-IPAC/R. Hurt

This animation shows the type of science that astronomers will be able to do with future Roman deep field observations. The gravity of intervening galaxy clusters and dark matter can lens the light from farther objects, warping their appearance as shown in the animation. By studying the distorted light, astronomers can study elusive dark matter, which can only be measured indirectly through its gravitational effects on visible matter. As a bonus, this lensing also makes it easier to see the most distant galaxies whose light they magnify.

The simulation demonstrates how Roman will see even farther back in time thanks to natural magnifying glasses in space. Huge clusters of galaxies are so massive that they warp the fabric of space-time, kind of like how a bowling ball creates a well when placed on a trampoline. When light from more distant galaxies passes close to a galaxy cluster, it follows the curved space-time and bends around the cluster. That lenses the light, producing brighter, distorted images of the farther galaxies.

Roman will be sensitive enough to use this phenomenon to see how even small masses, like clumps of dark matter, warp the appearance of distant galaxies. That will help narrow down the candidates for what dark matter could be made of.

Three small squares filled with bluish dots emerge from a black screen. The black background is then filled with bluish dots too, and then the frame zooms out to see a much larger area of the dots. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and A. Yung

In this simulated view of the deep cosmos, each dot represents a galaxy. The three small squares show Hubble's field of view, and each reveals a different region of the synthetic universe. Roman will be able to quickly survey an area as large as the whole zoomed-out image, which will give us a glimpse of the universe’s largest structures.

Constructing the cosmos over billions of years

A separate simulation shows what Roman might expect to see across more than 10 billion years of cosmic history. It’s based on a galaxy formation model that represents our current understanding of how the universe works. That means that Roman can put that model to the test when it delivers real observations, since astronomers can compare what they expected to see with what’s really out there.

A cone shaped assortment of blue dots is on a grid. The tip of the cone is labeled "present day," and the other end is labeled "13.4 billion years ago." Three slices from the middle are pulled out and show the universe's structure developing over time. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and A. Yung

In this side view of the simulated universe, each dot represents a galaxy whose size and brightness corresponds to its mass. Slices from different epochs illustrate how Roman will be able to view the universe across cosmic history. Astronomers will use such observations to piece together how cosmic evolution led to the web-like structure we see today.

This simulation also shows how Roman will help us learn how extremely large structures in the cosmos were constructed over time. For hundreds of millions of years after the universe was born, it was filled with a sea of charged particles that was almost completely uniform. Today, billions of years later, there are galaxies and galaxy clusters glowing in clumps along invisible threads of dark matter that extend hundreds of millions of light-years. Vast “cosmic voids” are found in between all the shining strands.

Astronomers have connected some of the dots between the universe’s early days and today, but it’s been difficult to see the big picture. Roman’s broad view of space will help us quickly see the universe’s web-like structure for the first time. That’s something that would take Hubble or Webb decades to do! Scientists will also use Roman to view different slices of the universe and piece together all the snapshots in time. We’re looking forward to learning how the cosmos grew and developed to its present state and finding clues about its ultimate fate.

Thousands of small, light and deep blue dots cover a black background representing galaxies in a simulated universe. A tiny white square is labeled "Hubble." A set of 18 much larger squares, oriented in three curved rows, are labeled "Roman." Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and A. Yung

This image, containing millions of simulated galaxies strewn across space and time, shows the areas Hubble (white) and Roman (yellow) can capture in a single snapshot. It would take Hubble about 85 years to map the entire region shown in the image at the same depth, but Roman could do it in just 63 days. Roman’s larger view and fast survey speeds will unveil the evolving universe in ways that have never been possible before.

Roman will explore the cosmos as no telescope ever has before, combining a panoramic view of the universe with a vantage point in space. Each picture it sends back will let us see areas that are at least a hundred times larger than our Hubble or James Webb space telescopes can see at one time. Astronomers will study them to learn more about how galaxies were constructed, dark matter, and much more.

The simulations are much more than just pretty pictures – they’re important stepping stones that forecast what we can expect to see with Roman. We’ve never had a view like Roman’s before, so having a preview helps make sure we can make the most of this incredible mission when it launches.

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