Scientists have used supercomputers to create a “synthetic universe” that will help predict what the next generation of supertelescopes will see when they peer into the cosmos.
Both of these telescopes areDark Universe“They are detectives investigating two of the most pressing mysteries in cosmology. Dark Energy and Dark mattersometimes called the “Dark Universe.” Of note, this news comes at a time when the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Today, July 12, marks the second anniversary of the JWST releasing its scientific results. The JWST has had a profound impact on astronomy, and researchers are still working to understand some of the amazing phenomena it has observed.
The newly generated synthetic universe should help avoid at least some of the element of surprise that scientists experience when NASA and its spacecraft collide. Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Vera C. Rubin Observatory No doubt these telescopes will reveal some unique and unexpected delights before we begin our exploration of space.
This simulated universe was created with Theta Supercomputer This was done at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois as part of a broader project called OpenUniverse.
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The mock universe is made up of about 4 million simulated images depicting the universe as it would be seen from the Roman probe, due to launch in 2027, and the Earth-based Rubin probe currently under construction atop Cerro Pachón in northern Chile.
“Using Argonne’s now-retired Theta machine, we accomplished in about nine days a task that would have taken about 300 years on a laptop,” says Katrin Heitmann, associate director of Argonne’s High Energy Physics Division, who managed supercomputer time for the project. It said in a statement“The results will shape Roman and Rubin’s future attempts to understand dark matter and dark energy, and provide other scientists with a preview of what they might study using the telescope’s data.”
Illuminating the dark universe
Roman Observatory, located about a million miles from Earth, and Rubin Observatory, located at high altitude in the dry, clear atmosphere of northern Chile, are very different observatories, yet both The mystery of dark energy.
“Dark energy” is the tentative name for the mysterious force that keeps the universe moving forever.Accelerating expansion The very nature of the universe’s expansion remains a mystery. This matter is a thorny problem for scientists because dark energy dominates the universe, making up about 68% to 70% of the universe’s total matter-energy budget.
The OpenUniverse simulations could help scientists better understand the signature of dark energy that will be seen when Roman and Rubin start delivering images, meaning that even faint traces of dark energy could soon yield important scientific results.
“OpenUniverse allows us to adjust our expectations of what we might discover with these telescopes,” Jim Chan, a scientist at the National Accelerator Laboratory who helped create the simulation, said in a statement. “It gives us the opportunity to test our processing pipeline, better understand our analysis code, and accurately interpret our results so that we’re ready to use them as soon as real data starts arriving.”
Roman and Rubin’s mission will also have an impact on our understanding of dark matter, which makes up about 26 percent of the remaining matter and energy in the universe, making this a particularly poetic one for Rubin. Vera RubinAmerican astronomer who proved the existence of dark matter in galaxies.
Dark matter is a problem because it doesn’t interact with light or normal matter, or if it does, it does so so weakly and rarely that we can’t detect it. Electronic, proton and neutron Just as everyday matter does, because everyday matter does interact with light and with itself.
Astronomers can only infer the existence of dark matter from its interaction with gravity, which affects everyday matter and the passage of light through it.
Rubin and Roman — named after Nancy Grace RomanNASA’s first science chief, affectionately known as the “Mother of Hubble” and the original advocate for building the powerful space telescope, will be looking for these effects.
The exploration of this dark universe that Rubin and Roman plan to undertake will be no easy feat. Rubin, scheduled to begin operation in 2025, will use the largest digital camera ever made to study the dark universe, while Roman will Hubble Space Telescope Or, JWST could.
Indeed, even simulating what these telescopes would see was a complex task requiring enormous computing power, but now that it’s been completed, the OpenUniverse team is confident that the benefits will soon become apparent.
“We’ve made incredible progress in simplifying these pipelines and making them easier to use,” Keesling concluded. “Now we want to encourage people to get into the simulations, see what improvements we can make, and prepare to use future data as efficiently as possible.”
