theSIGNAL SCIENCE
31 August 2026
"The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible."
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Science

NASA's Roman Telescope Will Map the Invisible Universe

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope promises to chart billions of galaxies, probe dark matter, and ask whether distant worlds could harbour life.

Ninety-five percent of the Universe is missing. Not lost, exactly — scientists know it is out there, bending light and pulling galaxies apart — but nobody can see it, touch it, or explain what it actually is. That is the extraordinary problem NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is being sent to solve. Dark matter is described as a kind of gravitational glue: invisible, yet powerful enough to hold entire galaxies together.

Dark energy, by contrast, is thought to work in the opposite direction — a mysterious repulsive force that is pushing the Universe apart at an ever-accelerating rate. Together, these two phenomena are believed to account for roughly 95% of everything that exists. Roman will attempt to map their effects by surveying billions of galaxies across vast stretches of cosmic time, producing what astronomer Millard compared to a giant cosmic onion. Peel back one layer and you see galaxies as they were a billion years ago; peel back another and you travel deeper still, watching how the Universe's structure shifted and stretched over time.

But Roman's ambitions do not stop at the edge of the visible cosmos. NASA is also pointing the telescope much closer to home — or at least, closer in astronomical terms. By studying the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, scientists hope to identify worlds that might be capable of supporting life. "With Roman, we are going to make this giant leap forward," said NASA's Fox, framing the search as one of the agency's defining missions.

Photo: Arnaud Mariat / Unsplash
An artist's rendering of the Roman Space Telescope scanning deep fields of distant galaxies.
Discuss
  • What does it mean for science if 95% of the Universe cannot yet be explained?
  • Why do you think NASA frames the search for life on other planets as one of its 'main goals'?
  • How might mapping billions of galaxies help scientists understand dark energy and dark matter?
Science

El Niño Is Getting Angrier — Here's Why

In Bucharest last August, a woman fanned herself on a sweltering bus. That scene is becoming more common, and a new study explains why: El Niño events are now 36% stronger than before the Industrial Revolution, with 16% of that jump packed into just the last 40 years. Julia Cole, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Michigan, traced El Niños back 900 years. She found something striking: the surge in their strength mirrors the rise in human-caused global warming almost perfectly. Why does this matter? Stronger El Niños mean worse heat waves, bigger floods in places like South Asia, and deeper droughts across Africa and Latin America.…
  • If El Niño is growing stronger, which regions face the most urgent decisions now?
∞
With Roman, we are going to make this giant leap forward that is going to allow us to look at these distant, distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know: could they be habitable.
Fox, NASA spokesperson
Science

Antarctica's "Doomsday Glacier" Is Shaking

In 2010, something strange began rattling the ice at the edge of the world — and nobody noticed for years. Hundreds of glacial earthquakes have now been detected at Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, the so-called Doomsday Glacier, between 2010 and 2023. These quakes are born when tall icebergs topple off a glacier and slam back into their parent ice wall. The violent collision sends seismic waves racing thousands of kilometres outward. What makes them so easy to miss? They produce no high-frequency waves — the very signals that global monitoring networks are designed to catch. Researchers had to use local Antarctic stations to find them at all. Most glacial earthquakes discovered so far sit in Greenland, where the largest rival the seismic punch of North Korea's nuclear tests.…
  • If Thwaites collapsed entirely, which coastal cities would face the greatest danger?
WORLD · Science
The universe is still speeding up, but nobody knows why
OCEANIA · Science
The discovery of the Great Barrier Reef's whale maternity ward
ASIA · Science
A melting glacier contributed to the deadly Nepal floods. We can expect more like this
EUROPE · Science
Scientists tested 212 plant-based meat alternatives. Every one contained fungal toxins
theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
gravitational gluerepulsive force
ever-accelerating ratepaleoclimateglacial earthquakes
swelteringseismic waves
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Causative have/get — have something done
Use 'have + object + past participle' (or 'get + object + past participle') to say that you arrange for someone else to do something for you, rather than doing it yourself.
mapped · analysed · detected · reviewed · measured · recorded · built
  1. NASA hopes to have the effects of dark matter and dark energy across billions of galaxies using the Roman Telescope.
  2. Scientists had to have the glacial earthquakes by local Antarctic stations, as global networks missed them entirely.
  3. Researchers are planning to get the atmospheres of distant exoplanets to search for signs of life.
  4. Julia Cole had climate data from 900 years of El Niño events before drawing her conclusions about global warming.
  5. The agency will have Roman's survey results by astronomers worldwide once the telescope begins transmitting data.
  6. Engineers working on the Roman Telescope had its mirror and instruments to the highest possible precision before launch.
3IDIOMS
Define each idiom in your own words. Then write one sentence of your own using one of the idioms.
  1. peel back a layer (Roman article)
  2. leaves hanging (Roman article)
  3. packed into (El Niño article)
  4. bites back (El Niño article)
  5. rattling the ice (Thwaites article)
4CRITICAL THINKING
All three articles describe phenomena that were either undetected or misunderstood for years — dark matter, intensifying El Niños, and glacial earthquakes. What does this pattern suggest about how science communicates uncertainty to the public, and could the way we report 'what we know' actually be creating a false sense of security?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the Roman Space Telescope story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
The three articles each describe a different kind of invisible threat — cosmic, climatic, and geological. Choose two of them and argue which poses the more urgent challenge for humanity to address in the next 50 years, using evidence from the articles to support your position.
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong.
  • warm→→
  • shaking→→
  • odd→→
  • concerned→→
  • shift→→
  • quiet→→
8SPEAKING
  1. Could a telescope ever truly prove something does not exist?
  2. Who should fund global climate research — governments or corporations?
  3. How reliable is 900-year-old climate data as scientific evidence?
  4. Should glacial earthquake monitoring become a global priority now?