The James Webb Space Telescope will rest in space at a point behind Earth. The instrument will be able to make powerful observations of far-off stars, and the telescope will be able to penetrate the dust of the stars. The image was taken from the website of Northrop Grumman.
There are pressing mysteries of dark matter and the James Webb Space Telescope could help to solve them.
About 27% of the known universe is thought to be dark matter, which is invisible to the naked eye. It has been difficult to understand since it was first suggested in 1933 by a Swiss-American astronomer. Dark matter has never been directly detected.
Scientists think that by measuring the effects of the telescope on its surrounding, it could answer some questions about dark matter. This would advance our knowledge of the universe.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch is live.
The James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures.
Scientists don't know what dark matter is made of, and they are still working on a way to detect it. Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research are working on methods for experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. The effects of dark matter on normal, visible matter can be studied by Webb.
You have to go in a roundabout way when you observe dark matter because you can't see it. Klaus Pontoppidan, a project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, told Space.com in a news conference in May that the Space Telescope Science Institute has the ability to try and get at that in new ways.
Astronomers can use existing technologies to measure how much mass is in stars and galaxies using a "roundabout" method. The evidence for the existence of dark matter shows that many galaxies can't exist without a large amount of invisible mass.
To help locate the dark matter, researchers will be able to observe the effects of lensing on the invisible mass by taking extremely sharp images. Einstein's general theory of relativity describes a phenomenon called lensing. The fabric of spacetime is slightly curved by a large mass, and this phenomenon makes a light beam slightly difficult.
There is dark matter across the universe.
In the distant universe, webb can find these mass and determine what is missing, which would likely be dark matter. "Webb will be particularly well-suited for this type of measurement, because its very sharp images will allow very small disturbances to be measured, and because it can see so deep into space, giving it access to many more background galaxies to measure disturbances caused by this gravitational lensing effect,"
The fact sheet says that scientists can understand the amount and nature of the dark matter in the universe by comparing the statistics of the evolution of the galaxy to theories of the role that dark matter played in that process.
It is designed to see farther into space than we have ever seen before, which will allow it to see farther back in time. By making these observations so deep into space, we can study the early beginnings of the universe and the role that dark matter may have played in their evolution.
Pontoppidan said that scientists are still working to understand when the universe's early galaxies formed. The processes involved in this formation are driven by dark matter evolution models.
The first galaxies in the universe can be measured with the help of the Webb tool, and it will allow us to understand their luminosity, mass distribution and much more.
The Ariane 5 rocket will be used to launch Webb on December 24, 2021.
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