The largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever created just got even more massive thanks to a “massive” update. The ambitious project to map the vast night sky above our heads now includes more than a billion galaxies. Its goal is to help astronomers better understand the formation of the universe, which in turn could help them. In revealing the mysterious properties of dark matter.
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, the creation of comprehensive maps promotes the inclusion of even the faintest galaxies, which is why the release of the tenth data from the Old Imaging Survey of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DES).DESI) is very important. Ultimately, astronomers want to map out an accurate map of the expansion history of the universe over the past 12 billion years.
to survey DESI It is one of three images taken together of 14,000 square degrees of the northern hemisphere sky using telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Pan American Observatory in Chile.
One of the main goals of the map is to identify approximately 40 million target galaxies for spectral survey DESI For five years, to help better understand the mysterious dark energy.
This unusual object, one of the great mysteries of cosmology, is thought to be an unknown force pushing things apart with a force greater than gravity and causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
Dark energy makes up nearly 70% of the universe but hardly anything is known about it. But just last week, scientists from Imperial College London suggested they have an explanation for its source: black holes.
Scientists have observed ancient and latent galaxies and found that black holes gain mass in a way consistent with them containing vacuum energy, or dark energy.
The size of the universe at different points in time is closely proportional to the mass of the supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies. In other words, the amount of dark energy in the universe can be calculated by the vacuum energy of the black hole, which means that black holes are the source of dark energy.
The researchers behind the project have chosen DESI Its goals and a spectral survey is currently underway, which experts hope will provide more information about this unseen part of the universe.
The latest version of the data added to the 2D map includes images of the southern sky outside the galaxy, especially in regions farther away from the disk of the Milky Way, which are ideal for looking far into the universe. With the addition of this view of the southern sky, it makes the total area plotted on the map more It is 20,000 square degrees, which is about half of the sky.
The images were also captured in a new infrared filter that allows scientists to spot more distant galaxies in different sections of the night sky because it captures a spectrum redder than the human eye can see.
