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EPFL
![A research team of several hundred scientists created the largest 3D map of the universe to date using a telescope.]()
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A research team of several hundred scientists created the largest 3D map of the universe to date using a telescope.
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imago images
![The earth looks like a tiny grain of sand given the size of the universe.]()
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The earth looks like a tiny grain of sand given the size of the universe.
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AFP
![Only one out of millions - the galaxy of the Milky Way, with the position of the sun on the edge of the galaxy.]()
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Only one out of millions – the galaxy of the Milky Way, with the position of the sun on the edge of the galaxy.
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This card was created from more than twenty years of collaboration between several hundred scientists from around thirty different institutions from around the world, as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) announced on Sunday.
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The 3D map was published on Sunday in the form of more than 20 scientific papers. The main location of the project called “Sloan Digital Sky Survey” is in New Mexico in the USA. Research was carried out there with a huge optical telescope.
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The published analyzes come in particular from the last cosmic sounding called “The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey” (eBOSS). Several EPFL researchers were also involved: Jean-Paul Kneib, who heads the Astrophysics Laboratory (LASTRO), is the initiator and was the main researcher for several years.
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Research goes back up to eleven billion years
The finished map shows filaments of matter and cavities, which define the structure of the universe from its beginnings, i.e. at the age of only 380,000 years, more precisely. From this point, the researchers measured the recurring patterns in the distribution of the galaxies and identified several key cosmological parameters, including the density of dark matter and energy in the universe.
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For this purpose, the teams involved in the eBOSS project examined the distribution of the mass in the universe using various tracers. In the project, the team researched up to eleven billion years ago. To do this, they used so-called quasars – the active nucleus of a galaxy, the supermassive black hole of which is extremely bright due to the matter enclosed in it.
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Map shows expansion of the universe
The map shows that the expansion of the universe accelerated at a certain point and has continued since then. The researchers blame dark energy for this. Although this energy is encompassed by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, its origin is still a mystery.
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If the eBOSS observations are compared with the studies on the early universe that have been carried out so far, there are differences in the measurement of the rate of expansion. For example, the constant now known as the “Hubble constant” is 10 percent slower than the value that is calculated from the closest galaxies to us.
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Due to the high level of accuracy and the large variety of data in the eBOSS program, the researchers believe that this difference is unlikely to be accidental. There is still no generally accepted explanation for these differences between the different measurements. One of the researchers’ thesis is that an as yet unknown form of matter or energy from the primordial universe could have left traces in our history. (SDA)
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