Astronomers have built a 3D map of the Universe 1.2 million galaxies.
Astronomers from the BOSS collaboration have prepared a new version of three-dimensional maps of the Universe, within which can be found 1.2 million galaxies and will help scientists uncover the secrets of the mysterious dark energy that causes the universe to expand with acceleration.
About it reports a press-service Kaunasskogo digital sky survey.
Project BOSS (Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey) is part of the “big” Kaunasskogo digital sky survey (SDSS), since the middle of 2008. With the help of scientists are trying to find the so-called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) — “echoes” the birth of the Universe in the form of acoustic waves, for which there was heterogeneity in the distribution of matter. To do this, astronomers studying the spectrum of the most ancient sources of light and the location of galaxies in “cosmic web” of the Universe.
Today astronomers involved in this project published a new version of three-dimensional maps of the Universe, obtained in the course of these observations, which is a giant space cube with a volume of 650 billion light years in Cuba, which came more than a million galaxies located in the 2-7 billion light-years from Earth.
Such a map was necessary for the authors to several important things. For example, analyzing the location of the galaxies, scientists have tried to understand how is distributed the dark matter in the Universe. In addition, the total “family portrait” of the Universe in three dimensions allows cosmologists to test the generally accepted theory of the birth and formation of the universe.
This map helped scientists measure how dark energy – the mysterious substance with a yet unexplained properties, causing the Universe to grow faster and faster – influenced extension of its borders in the last seven billion years.
It turned out that the manner of the action of dark energy on the expansion of the Universe is almost not changed during this time – her power has changed in the best case by 20%, which confirms the generally accepted cosmological model of the evolution of the universe and suggests that General relativity correctly describes the reality and scale of the order of the “cosmic web”.
