ESA, NASA, Ok. SHARON/TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY AND E. OFEK/CALTECH
With its exceptional ability to detect faint objects, Rubin is poised to significantly expand our understanding of the solar system by increasing the number of identified asteroids and comets by a factor of 10 to 100. Numerous asteroids could potentially pose a significant threat to Earth, measuring over 140 meters in diameter and having orbits that bring them perilously close to our planet. Researchers will catalog approximately 40,000 newly discovered small, icy celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt, a vast, understudied region beyond Neptune where many comets originate, thereby enabling scientists to gain a deeper understanding of our solar system’s structure and history.
Anais Möller, astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
Beyond our solar system, Rubin will witness characteristic glints signaling the passage of exoplanets across their parent stars, resulting in temporary eclipses. It must also reveal hundreds of recently discovered brown dwarfs, faint entities situated between planets and stars in terms of dimension, whose positions within the Milky Way can provide insight into how the environments in which stars are born impact the dimensions and types of objects that form there. Researchers are poised to reveal previously undiscovered faint dwarf galaxies orbiting our own cosmic backyard, scrutinizing stellar streams – lingering pathways of stars – forged during the Milky Way’s violent encounters with similar galaxies in the distant past.
The potential to explore beyond our galaxy’s confines holds promise for charting approximately 20 billion previously unseen galaxies and tracing their positioning within vast, network-like structures commonly referred to as the cosmic web. Researchers studying the internet’s structure believe that the gravitational influence of dark matter immediately shapes it, allowing them to gather evidence supporting diverse theories about the nature of dark matter itself. By monitoring tens of millions of supernovae, Rubin will determine their distances from Earth, thereby providing a key metric for gauging the accelerating expansion rate of the universe. Researchers speculate that a hypothetical “dark energy” driving cosmic expansion may have had a greater potency in the past. The knowledge gleaned from exceptionally distant, and therefore ancient, supernovae could potentially fortify or discredit such theories while likely refining our understanding of dark energy.
SPENCER LOWELL
As excitement builds, the prospect of Rubin’s launch is met with widespread anticipation in the region, posing a significant challenge in its execution.
“We’ve never witnessed a telescope of this magnitude capture such vast, profound views,” says Möller. “That’s a revolutionary approach to pinpointing issues that are shifting in the sky and understanding their underlying physics.”
