LONDON: The map created by scientists is significant because it is the most comprehensive picture of the cosmos built so far. The scientists have expressed hope that the map would help other understand how matter is distributed throughout the galaxies.
“We’re closing in on the mystery of the peculiar motions (of the universe) and dark matter and the link between the two,” said Professor Mike Hudson, associate dean of science, computing at Waterloo.
Jonathan Carrick and Stephen Turnbull, colleagues in Waterloo’s department of physics and astronomy, and French researcher Guilhem Lavaux, got together to compile data collected by telescope for over a decade to build this map.
The researchers spent over three years to assemble those images into a complex map that gives information about the rough direction of the universe’s many clusters of galaxies, their expansion speed and distance from Earth.
The findings of the study were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a leading research journal for astrophysics.
“It’s been a huge effort. Different groups have spent years looking at different parts of the sky, and we collected that data,” said Hudson, who is also an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
“All these other groups were like explorers who went off in different directions and brought back their pieces of data. We assembled it into one coherent map,” he added.
He said the mapping project was similar to measuring an infinitely large loaf of raisin bread in the oven, where the raisins, or galaxies, are spreading apart from each other when they are baked.
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