The Challenge and the Opportunity
For decades, we have been trying to understand the physical structure of our universe on the basis of severely limited observations. All the galaxies, stars, and other cosmic matter that we see—even with the full spectrum of ground—and space-based telescopes in operation today—amounts to luminous foam on an ocean of "dark matter." This mysterious form of matter is transparent and emits no radiation, and so is invisible. Yet dark matter dominates the mass of the universe and drives the development of structure through its gravitational influence. Over the course of billions of years, mountains of dark matter have shepherded the assembly of ordinary matter into stars, planets, and life.
Synergy between fundamental science and advanced technology has given us the opportunity, for the first time in human history, to view the panorama of dark matter directly and to chart the development of structure on a cosmic time scale. The proposed Large Synoptic Survey Telescope can provide this unique view, which will test theories of the nature of dark matter, as well as theories of the origin and fate of our universe. Another key opportunity enabled by the unique capability of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is its ability to find all significant near-Earth Asteroids.
Here and now, non-luminous matter takes multiple forms, from dense clusters of unknown composition to nearby asteroids that could threaten Earth. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will simultaneously open new windows onto varied hidden forms of mass-energy in our universe. It will image huge dark matter structures directly; it will provide unprecedented insight into our evolving and transient universe; and it will chart all significant near-Earth objects. The project engages novel developing technology—optics and software and high throughput data analysis—to image and map non-luminous matter. Images from a pilot project called the Deep Lens Survey give a taste of what the sky will look like with LSST.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope project has significant promise for sheding light on the dark energy. Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos