While the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes continue to offer astronomers revolutionary glimpses of our universe, their upcoming sibling may very well upstage them. Scheduled to launch in 2027, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed with a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, with the potential to document light from over a billion galaxies over its career. Combined with timelapse recording capabilities, Roman will help researchers to better understand exoplanets, infrared astrophysics, and the nature of dark matter.

But it doesn’t stop there. According to a study published on July 15 in The Astrophysics Journal, Roman is poised to eventually capture an estimated 100,000 celestial explosions over its lifetime. These could include everything from supernovae to hungry black holes, but astrophysicists theorize Roman may potentially even find evidence of the very first stars to ever form in the universe.

Galactic ‘gold mine’

“​​Whether you want to explore dark energy, dying stars, galactic powerhouses, or probably even entirely new things we’ve never seen before, this survey will be a gold mine,” Benjamin Rose, a physicist at Baylor University and the study’s lead author, said in a statement.

Rose and colleagues reached their estimate after running a simulation of the Roman’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Core Community Survey. Once in place, the space telescope’s survey is designed to scan a single, vast portion of the universe every five days for two years. Astronomers will compile all of those snapshots into what amounts to cosmic movies, then document every kind of energy blast they find.

“By seeing the way an object’s light changes over time and splitting it into spectra—individual colors with patterns that reveal information about the object that emitted the light—we can distinguish between all the different types of flashes Roman will see,” explained Rebekah Hounsell, a study co-author and assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Peering back in time

The majority of events will likely be various types of exploding stars, or novae. The telescope’s survey itself is particularly oriented to detect a rarer class of stellar bursts known as Type Ia supernovae. These cosmic mileage posts help researchers measure cosmic distances and analyze the universe’s expansion rate. As NASA explains, understanding the speed of expansion amid various epochs can key astronomers into dark matter’s behavior. Based on this  study’s simulation, Roman’s handlers can expect to find about 27,000 Type Ia supernovae. That’s more than 10 times the number collected by all previous surveys.

Peering further into the depths of space also means Roman will glimpse further back into time than any telescope before it. Most supernovae detected so far by astronomers have occurred within the last 8 billion years. Roman is expected to push that timeline back to over 10 billion years ago— and possibly even as far as 11.5 billion years.

“Filling these data gaps could also fill in gaps in our understanding of dark energy,” said Rose. “Evidence is mounting that dark energy has changed over time, and Roman will help us understand that change by exploring cosmic history in ways other telescopes can’t.”

The simulation dataset created by Rose’s team isn’t limited to their own study. According to Hounsell, other experts can use it to develop their own machine-learning algorithms to comb through Roman’s gigantic troves of data for their own subjects.

“While searching for type Ia supernovae, Roman is going to collect a lot of cosmic ‘bycatch’—other phenomena that aren’t useful to some scientists, but will be invaluable to others,” explained Hounsell.

One such phenomena may be multiple kilonovae—gargantuan explosions that result when a neutron star (a leftover supernova core) slams into another neutron star. Astronomers theorize that kilonovae may also occur when a neutron star collides with a black hole. Researchers have only officially ever documented a single such event, but the study’s authors believe the Roman telescope could pinpoint another five of them.

These anticipated discoveries only scratch the surface of what Roman could achieve. However, engineers must first finish the telescope and successfully launch it into orbit. The launch is currently scheduled no earlier than May 2027. NASA’s multibillion dollar budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration may jeopardize the Roman project, despite its potential completion ahead of time and cheaper than expected.

“This is nuts,” former co-chair of Roman’s science team David Spergel told Scientific American earlier this year. “You’ve built it, and you’re not going to do the final step to finish it? That is such a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
However, It’s by no means a death sentence for Roman just yet. As of July 15, Congress was in talks to reject the majority of the White House’s proposed NASA cuts.

 

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