The result of an international scientific collaboration, the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) of the NAOC (National Astronomical Observatories of China) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) have conceived a truly gigantic map of the universe .
It is digitally spread over 10 trillion pixels and contains around 2 billion objects . Astronomical observations reveal that the universe is expanding and appears to be accelerating.
10 trillion pixels
To create this monster in the form of a map, almost 200 researchers from the NAOC and DESI observed galaxies and analyzed the data together over the past six years.
Now DESI will undertake a five-year mission to obtain the redshifts of millions of galaxies and build the largest 3D universe. In this way it is intended to solve the mystery dark energy: the matter that drives the expansion of the universe .
Of all the matter in the visible universe, only 4% is normal matter, like the matter from which all things we know are made. 23% is made of dark (invisible) matter, which physicists suspect exists but do not know what it is. The remaining 73%, that is, almost all the matter in the universe, is dark energy , which is also invisible.
The Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) International cooperation project team jointly released the new two-dimensional sky map, paving the way for the upcoming new generation cosmological redshifts survey. (photo / BASS) pic.twitter.com/5oiCYrC6Qp
– China Science (@ChinaScience) January 14, 2021