#cosmology

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Dark : the dominant form of energy in our , is causing our ’s expansion to accelerate.

Many have tried to concoct valternatives, with David Wiltshire’s Timescape cosmology claiming it can successfully explain observations without dark energy at all.

Despite the popularity of such alternatives, they fail spectacularly when confronted with the full suite of evidence about the Universe.

But dark energy cannot be eliminated so easily.


https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/lumpy-explain-dark-energy/

Stars behaving absurdly

For centuries, the only way in which to illuminate the mysteries of black holes was through the power of mathematics.

As celestial entities go, black holes are, paradoxically, both commonplace and extraordinary. They could be seen as commonplace due to their general ubiquity.

By Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau via @aeonmag

https://aeon.co/essays/mathematics-is-the-only-way-we-have-of-peering-into-a-black-hole?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=fe59a6d476-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_10_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-fe59a6d476-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

A 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blasting from the M87 galaxy’s 6.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, September 2024. Courtesy NASA/ESA/STSCI

After arrival around L2, immediately started to produce first images. Both instruments on board worked perfectly. But there were some issues: some straylight in the VIS instrument required survey replanning, sometimes solar X-rays needed to be flagged, and a fix was required for initial guiding problems of the spacecraft.

All this was quickly fixed.

More images and explanations, : https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-anniversary

Alarming straylight on the VIS instrument in certain pointing orientations. Credits: ESA
Small guiding problem: the telescope moves while taking pictures. Credits: ESA / Euclid Consortium / TAS-I
X-ray flares from the Sun printed the telescope's insides on VIS. Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA

has been in space since 1 July 2023, and, after commissioning and initial calibration, started surveying the sky ultimately in February. We now celebrate "52 weeks of in space - first year of a big journey to new physics":

https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-anniversary

These images tell a story about technology, challenges, the , but foremost about the many people that made possible, and that are now working on the .

~500 members of the Euclid Consortium during this year's annual meeting, here in Rome, Italy. These meetings are a forum to both get up to speed on the current state of the mission, but also to network between the different science working groups and the groups carrying out the sky survey and developing and running the data and science pipelines.