Dark energy is ninth in line at NASA's Roman telescope

The Roman Space Telescope's data flood has forced NASA astronomers to cap cosmic discoveries at nine per year.

Dr. Petra Voidwell1 Sept 20261 min readShorts

NASA's Roman Space Telescope is finding things a thousand times faster than Hubble, which turns out to be faster than astronomers can be amazed. Discoveries are now capped at nine per year. Dark energy is currently ninth in the queue, behind a promising smudge.

The first casualty of the launch was my Saturday. I had plans. The telescope did not care.

I work on the Roman data team. The Roman Space Telescope scans the sky about a thousand times faster than Hubble. It sends back 1.4 terabytes a day. That is a lot of universe. Nobody planned for what to do when the universe arrives all at once.

So we ran a study. We found that a working astronomer can be genuinely amazed about nine times a year before the feeling stops arriving. We tested this on graduate students. The control group looked at old Hubble pictures and remained calm throughout. The margin of error is small. The despair is not.

NASA has therefore capped discoveries at nine per year. Everything else goes in a folder marked later. Dark energy is the force pushing the universe apart. It is currently ninth in the queue, behind a very promising smudge.

We asked the universe to slow down. It declined. So now astonishment is rationed, like sugar in wartime.

If Roman finds life on another world, we will announce it on a Saturday, quietly. It is pencilled in for a slow news week in 2034. Please do not be surprised early. We need those.