New matrix
After two decades of work, a giant team of astronomers unveiled their piece of resistance: the most complete map of the universe ever assembled.
The map spans over 12 billion years in the history of the universe, CNET reports. To build it, astronomers relied on data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and analyzed more than 4 million galaxies and quasars. And by doing so, they can help solve a great debate in the astronomy community about how fast the universe is growing.
Speeding up
Will Percival, a researcher at the University of Waterloo of Canada who worked on the map, called the project “the full story of the expansion of the universe” in an SDSS press release.
A key part of that story occurred about six billion years ago, according to project data. The map suggests that just at that point in time, the rate at which the universe was expanding rapidly accelerated.
And that?
The expansion rate of the universe, the Hubble Constant, is a touchy subject among astronomers: Theoretical calculations of value have long been at odds with actual observations, baffling experts. With this new map, the SDSS team believes they may have resolved that mismatch by determining that the universe accelerated at a specific time rather than constantly expanding.
“Only with maps like ours,” said Oxford University researcher Eva-Maria Mueller in the statement, “can you say for sure that there is a mismatch at Hubble Constant.”
READ MORE: Scientists reveal the largest 3D map in the universe[[[[CNET]
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