The largest high-resolution 3D map of our Universe has been unveiled.
An international team of astronomers has charted more than 47 million galaxies and quasars.
The groundbreaking map, released on Wednesday (April 15), comes from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project and promises to revolutionise our understanding of cosmic structure and expansion.
Researchers hail the achievement as a major milestone in cosmology, with the data now available for global scientific analysis.
The five-year survey, finished ahead of schedule and with vastly more data than expected, has produced the map to allow researchers to explore dark energy, the fundamental ingredient that makes up about 70% of our Universe and is driving its accelerating expansion.
The largest ever 3D map of the Universe, created by the now-completed five-year Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. (Pix via DESI Member Institutions / SWNS)
A thin slice of the map produced by the DESI five-year survey shows galaxies and quasars above and below the plane of the Milky Way. (Pix via Claire Lamman/DESI collaboration / SWNS)
By comparing how galaxies clustered in the past with their distribution today, researchers can trace dark energy’s influence over 11 billion years of cosmic history.
Surprising results using DESI’s first three years of data hinted that dark energy, once thought to be a “cosmological constant,” might be evolving over time.
With the full set of five years of data, researchers will have significantly more information to test whether that hint disappears or grows. If confirmed, it would mark a major shift in how we think about our Universe and its potential fate, which hinges on the balance between matter and dark energy.
Stephanie Juneau, associate astronomer and NSF NOIRLab representative for DESI, said: “Ultimately, we are doing this for all humanity, to better understand our Universe and its eventual fate.
“After finding hints that dark energy might deviate from a constant, potentially altering that fate, this moment feels like sitting on the edge of my seat as we analyse the new map to see whether those hints will be confirmed.”
A small, zoomed-in portion of DESI’s year-five map in which the large-scale structure of the Universe, created by gravity, is visible. (Pix via DESI Member Institutions / SWNS)
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is mounted on the US National Science Foundation Nicholas U. Mayall 4-metre Telescope at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.
The international experiment brings together the expertise of more than 900 researchers (including 300 PhD students) from over 70 institutions.