Groundbreaking telescope reveals first piece of new cosmic map
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Greetings, earthlings! I’m Jackie Wattles, and I’m thrilled to be a new name bringing awe to your inbox.
I’ve covered space exploration for nearly a decade at CNN, and there has never been a more exciting time to follow space and science discoveries. As researchers push forward to explore and understand the cosmos, advancements in technology are sparking rapid developments in rocketry, astronomical observatories and a multitude of scientific instruments.
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Look no further than the missions racing to unlock dark matter and the mysterious force known as dark energy, both so named precisely because science has yet to explain these phenomena.
Astronomers have never detected dark matter, but they believe it makes up about 85% of the total matter in the universe. Meanwhile, the existence of dark energy helps researchers explain why the universe is expanding — and why that expansion is speeding up.
Extraordinary new scientific instruments are churning out trailblazing data, ready to reshape how scientists view the cosmos.
A prime example is the European Space Agency’s wide-angle Euclid telescope that launched in 2023 to investigate the riddles of dark energy and dark matter.
Euclid this week delivered the first piece of a cosmic map — containing about 100 million stars and galaxies — that will take six years to create.
These stunning 3D observations may help scientists see how dark matter warps light and curves space across galaxies.
Meanwhile, on a mountaintop in northern Chile, the US National Science Foundation and Stanford University researchers are preparing to power up the world’s largest digital camera inside the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Unearthed
In the mountains of Uzbekistan, a research team used lasers strapped to a flying robot to uncover two cities buried and lost for centuries.
The anthropologists said they had mapped these forgotten medieval towns for the first time — located at a key crossroad of ancient silk trade routes — using a drone equipped with LiDAR, or light detection and ranging equipment.
When nature reclaims what’s left of once thriving civilizations, scientists are increasingly turning to remote sensing to peer through dense vegetation.
The images revealed two large settlements dotted with watchtowers, fortresses, complex buildings, plazas and pathways that tens of thousands of people may have called home.
