Rest assured that as everything seems to be falling apart on Earth, it also appears that the rest of the universe is on a downward trajectory, too. “Since Euclid is so comprehensive, you can really measure dust temperatures in a way you can’t argue with.”Dust temperatures are a key barometer of a galaxy’s health. “Dust grains are connected with star formation, and when stars burn up, they make a whole bunch of dust grains in the process,” Scott said. In those days of yore when the universe was a little over three billion years old, the average dust temperature was 35 Kelvin, which is a fairly significant departure from zero. “The amount of dust in galaxies and their dust temperatures have been decreasing for billions of years, which means we’re past the epoch of maximum star formation,” Scott said.