An international group of astrophysicists just released the largest 3D map of the universe.
According to reports, the new map of the universe is not only the largest, but it’s also the most complete to date. The project, which spanned two decades, used data observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It also involved hundreds of scientists from over a dozen institutions around the world.
The 3D map was built upon the data that was collected from as early as 1998. In a statement, Jean-Paul Kneib, a researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, said:
“In 2012, I launched the eBOSS project with the idea of producing the most complete 3D map of the Universe throughout the lifetime of the Universe, implementing for the first time celestial objects that indicate the distribution of matter in the distant Universe, galaxies that actively form stars and quasars. It is a great pleasure to see the culmination of this work today.”
The Most Complete 3D Map of the Universe
To complete the map, the scientists combined the analyses of the eBOSS map and earlier SDSS experiments. The astrophysicists involved in the project claim that the new 3D map of the universe shows the measurement of over four million galaxies and quasars.
“We have now provided the most accurate expansion history measurements over the widest-ever range of cosmic time,” Will Percival of the University of Waterloo, eBOSS’s survey scientist, said. “These studies allow us to connect all these measurements into a complete story of the expansion of the Universe.”
The new 3D map shows the elements that make up the universe’s structure. Many of these elements were said to be from when the universe was only around 300,000 years old.
The map also revealed that at some point, the expansion of the universe did accelerate and has continued until now. It also supports Albert Einstein‘s theory that an unknown element, now known as the dark energy, caused the acceleration.
However, scientists found a discrepancy when they compared the observations of eBOSS with early studies of the expansion of the universe. The Hubble constant is ten percent slower than the value resulting from distances between the galaxies closest to our planet.
So, while the new 3D map of the universe offers new insights into the history of the cosmos, the answers to its many mysteries are yet to be found.
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