Colors of the motherland | Draw the largest 3D map of the universe with dark energy – reveal the fate of the world

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A modified telescope in Arizona has produced a provisional map that is the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created, through the Dark Energy Spectroscopy Instrument (DESI), a collaboration between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and scientists from around the world. world. between 2015 and 2019. The Mayal Telescope at the Kit Peak National Observatory in the Sonoran Desert.

The purpose of the dark energy spectroscopy tool is to create a larger 3D map of the universe, to better understand the physics of dark energy, the mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of Universe“We hope that understanding the effects of dark energy will help us determine the ultimate fate of the universe,” said Julian Gay, a physicist at the Berkeley Laboratory working on the project, according to Live Science.

How did scientists draw the largest 3D map of the universe?

The DESI team used a giant 2D map of the universe released in January 2021 to prepare the tool for the 3D study. The new 3D map pinpoints the exact locations of more than 7.5 million galaxies, far exceeding the previous record of 930,000 galaxies set by the DESI Team The 2008 Sloan Digital Sky Survey, DESI collects spectral images of millions of galaxies scattered across approximately a third of the sky.

The universe has been expanding since it began with the big bang About 13.8 billion years ago, it is now much larger by an estimated at least 92 billion light-years, from the farthest distances we can see.

The DESI project scientists hope that their 3D map of the universe will reveal the depths of the sky and help them map giant galaxy clusters, and the researchers hope to use the data to determine the history and ultimate fate of the expanding universe.

What is dark energy?

Scientists used to believe that the universe is expanding at a constant rate, or that matter and energy in the universe can eventually slow this expansion, but monitoring of powerful bursts of stars called supernovae that began at the end of the last century showed that the expansion is actually accelerating, which is why scientists invented the phrase “dark energy” to account for this unexpected phenomenon.

Calculations now indicate that dark energy makes up about 70% of the total energy in the observable universe. The effects of dark energy are now recognized as the “cosmological constant” that Albert Einstein included in his theory of general relativity.