HUGE 3D MAP OF COSMOS CREATED
Device used could help us understand ‘dark energy’
NEW data has allowed scientists to look 11 billion years into the past and create a 3D map of how our universe expanded.
The amazing results come after just one year in operation of a device that uses 5,000 tiny robots within a mountaintop telescope to glimpse into the vastness of space.
The device, called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), uses light reflections from objects in space to map out the cosmos across history.
DESI has created the largest 3D map of our cosmos ever constructed and the most precise, being the first time in history that scientists have measured past expansion with more than one per cent accuracy.
The results are from a five year study, posted on arXiv and in talks at the American Physical Society meeting in the United States and the Rencontres de Moriond in Italy. These suggest that it could be time to update our current model of the universe, known as Lambada CDM, as DESI has some subtle differences in its predictions.
Within one year, DESI has become twice as powerful at measuring expansion than its predecessor, which took more than a decade.
Dr Julien Guy from Berkeley Lab, California, said: “The dataset we are collecting is exceptional, as is the rate at which we are gathering it.
“This is the most precise measurement I have ever done in my life. Understanding how our universe has evolved is tied to how it ends, and to one of the biggest mysteries in physics: dark energy, the unknown ingredient causing our universe to expand faster and faster.”
DESI-RABLE: A view of the universe