Dark Energy Revealed Through Largest 3D Map of the Universe Ever Made [Video]

Researchers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to make the largest 3D map of our universe and world-leading measurements of dark energy, the mysterious cause of its accelerating expansion.

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  DESI
  The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a new instrument for conducting a spectrographic survey of distant galaxies that has been retrofitted onto the Mayall Telescope on top of Kitt Peak in the Sonoran Desert 55 miles distant from Tucson, Arizona. Its main components are a focal plane containing 5000 fiber-positioning robots and a bank of spectrographs which are fed by the fibers. It enables an experiment to probe the expansion history of the Universe and the mysterious physics of dark energy.

  ” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{"attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"}]” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>DESI mapped galaxies and quasars with unprecedented detail, creating the largest 3D map of the universe ever made and measuring how fast the universe expanded over 11 billion years.

• This is the first time that scientists have measured the expansion history of that distant period (8-11 billion years ago) with a precision of better than 1%, providing a powerful way to study dark energy.
• With just its first year of data, DESI has surpassed all previous 3D spectroscopic maps combined and confirmed the basics of our best model of the universe – with some tantalizing areas to explore with more data.

With 5,000 tiny robots in a mountaintop telescope, researchers can look 11 billion years into the past. The light from …