Dark Energy’s Day

Following hard on the heels of the announcement of a Nobel Prize for cosmology earlier this morning, the European Space Agency has this afternoon officially announced the two candidates which have been chosen for its next M-class missions from a shortlist of three.

One of the successful candidates, EUCLID, is directly relevant to the topic covered by the Nobel Prize announced this morning. “Euclid will address key questions relevant to fundamental physics and cosmology, namely the nature of the mysterious dark energy and dark matter. Astronomers are now convinced that these substances dominate ordinary matter. Euclid would map the distribution of galaxies to reveal the underlying ‘dark’ architecture of the Universe.”

Now that it’s definitely been selected, I hope to devote time in due course for a longer post about EUCLID’s capabilities and intentions, but in the meantime I’ll just say that it’s been a very good day for Dark Energy.

P.S. The other successful candidate is called Solar Orbiter. Commiserations to advocates of the third mission on the shortlist of three, PLATO. Close, but no cigar…

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