The Universe is Filled With Natural Telescope Lenses. Roman Will Use Them to Study Dark Matter

We don't know what dark matter is, but that doesn't stop astronomers from using it to their advantage. Dark matter is part of what makes gravitational lensing so effective. Astronomers expect the Roman Space Telescope to find 160,000 gravitational lenses, and dark matter makes a crucial contribution to these lenses.

Jun 13, 2025 - 22:50
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The Universe is Filled With Natural Telescope Lenses. Roman Will Use Them to Study Dark Matter

This image shows a simulated observation from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with an overlay of its Wide Field Instrument’s field of view. More than 20 gravitational lenses, with examples shown at left and right, are expected to pop out in every one of Roman’s vast observations. Roman will use these lenses to detect small dark matter haloes around dwarf galaxies to test the Lambda CDM model. (Image: NASA, Bryce Wedig, Tansu Daylan and Joseph DePasquale)

We don't know what dark matter is, but that doesn't stop astronomers from using it to their advantage. Dark matter is part of what makes gravitational lensing so effective. Astronomers expect the Roman Space Telescope to find 160,000 gravitational lenses, and dark matter makes a crucial contribution to these lenses.