Interesting Facts about Largest 3rd Map of the Universe

Elmira | 07 - 24 - 2021
3D map of the universe

The 3D map of the universe is considered the biggest map of the universe. It consists of over 2 million galaxies and comprises 11 billion years of the universe’s records. Read on to uncover more important facts about the most detailed map of the universe.

After five years of research and analysis about space, scientists released what they call the “largest three-dimensional map of the universe” ever. Unfortunately, you can’t view from the house. 

The Biggest Map Ever

How Much of the Universe Is Mapped?
  • A. 12 Billion Light Years
  • B. 2 Billion Light Years
  • C. 4 Billion Light Years
  • D. 10 Billion Light Years

The most detailed map of the universe is the result of an ongoing project known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey(SDSS) is an important map that expands not only to observe earth but also the universe. It is found to solve cosmic conundrums in the process.

The map’s recent update is that it can measure or map more than 2 million galaxies, ranging from the Milky Way to ancient objects over 11 billion lightyears.

This new detailed map can help astronomers learn more about a dark period of the Universe’s expansion called ‘the gap.’

According to Kyle Dawson, a cosmologist at the University of Utah and lead researcher of the project, they learn both the ancient history of the universe and its current expansion history. However, there is a gap in the middle 11 billion years. They worked five years to fill that gap.

The gap starts some billion years after the Big Bang. Researchers can measure the rate of the Universe’s expansion because of the cosmic microwave background. They calculated current expansion by measuring the distance between Earth and nearby galaxies developed over time. In order to fill the gap, scientists around the world examined bright-burning quasars( very luminous objects powered by the black holes in the cosmos) and distant galaxies.

3D Map of Universe

Researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) unveiled a comprehensive analysis of the biggest 3D dimensional map of the universe ever made. The new results were submitted by the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS).

The excellent 3-dimensional map was created with the contribution of more than 100 astrophysicists. The main motto of this project is known as the ‘redshift.’ It is a process in which the light from the most distant galaxies is increased by the expansion of the universe, expanding its wavelength and moving it toward the red end of the spectrum. Hence, because of the cosmic color-change, distant light sources may appear in red while those which are the closest to Earth may appear in blue.

The recent and largest 3D map of the universe unveils that the filaments and voids which show the structure in the universe are going back to when it was only 30,000 years old. It also showed that about 6 million years ago, the universe started to accelerate.

The team calculated the rate of cosmic expansion 11 billion years ago by measuring the redshift of millions of distant objects with their velocities.

Researchers believe that the universe’s expansion to a mystical force known as dark energy. Though no one is completely sure whether it exists or not. Surveys like this help researchers to find out the properties of dark energy.

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