New data from a satellite one million miles from Earth has helped UK scientists shed light on how mysterious forces shaped the evolution of the Universe.
The release of the first survey data from the European Space Agency's Euclid satellite has led to a flurry of scientific advances that further our understanding of the cosmos.
Launched in July 2023, Euclid is mapping the Universe with unprecedented precision and accuracy. By examining more than one billion galaxies over six years, this groundbreaking space telescope aims to explore two of astronomy's biggest mysteries: dark matter and dark energy.
Despite covering less than 0.5 per cent of the complete study area, the data is already proving to be a rich source of discovery for UK scientists.
A team based at the University of Portsmouth and other institutions around the world trained machine learning algorithms and citizen scientists to search for strong gravitational lenses. These phenomena occur when massive objects, such as galaxies, distort space-time so much that they warp the light from objects behind them into rings or arcs. Such lenses are incredibly rare - researchers liken it to searching for needles in a haystack - but the team has identified 500 strong lens candidates.
These new lenses provide a highly magnified view of distant galaxies, and will allow us to make new measurements of the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that make up 95 per cent of our Universe but which are poorly understood.
Professor Thomas Collett , University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation
Rarer still are systems which contain two galaxies being lensed by the same object. Four of these have been spotted and will help astronomers understand the shape and structure of the Universe.
University of Portsmouth PhD student, Natalie Lines, said: "These lenses are already allowing us to learn about our Universe, but this is just the beginning for Euclid. The full Euclid survey will be a revolution for strong lensing."
Professor Thomas Collett from the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation added: "These new lenses provide a highly magnified view of distant galaxies, and will allow us to make new measurements of the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that make up 95 per cent of our Universe but which are poorly understood."
When one of the gravitational lenses happens to sit right in front of a background galaxy, the magnification factor can be x10, or even more, giving a zoomed-in view of the distant Universe, just at that particular point.
These lenses are already allowing us to learn about our Universe, but this is just the beginning for Euclid. The full Euclid survey will be a revolution for strong lensing.
Natalie Lines, University of Portsmouth PhD student
Lenses can help investigate young galaxies more than halfway across the Universe, as they form stars and start to take on the familiar shapes we see nearby.
Euclid has been designed to look at a much larger region of the sky than the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope, meaning it can capture a wide range of different objects all in the same image - from faint to bright, from distant to nearby, from the most massive of galaxy clusters to the smallest nearby stars.
A much larger data release is scheduled for October 2026 which will include results about the nature of dark energy.
