Our Universe Mapped in Accurate 3D. Video Inside!
Posted on: 08/20/2012 01:38 AM
The universe is pretty freakin’ big. Trying to think about the massive expanse of it hurts. Not mention trying to map the whole thing.
But that is exactly what a team from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III did. Well, they didn’t quite map the whole thing but they did manage to chart over 200 million galaxies, and spectra of 1.35 million galaxies. (Spectra is much more time consuming to collect than just snapping a photo. Spectra provides the distance of a galaxy). By mapping the universe, scientists can determine the age of the universe, how fast it is expanding, and it helps them to better understand the ‘dark matter,’ and the ‘dark energy’ floating around up there.