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The map covers 47 million galaxies.
Looking up at the night sky, it is easy to wonder what fills the vast empty spaces between the stars.
Scientists have spent decades trying to map the invisible forces shaping our universe, and a massive new project has just reached a major finish line.
A massive map
Researchers working on the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) have successfully mapped their entire target area, Ohio State News reports.
The team finished the job ahead of schedule, collecting much more information than they originally anticipated.
This huge three-dimensional chart is designed to help experts understand the mysterious force that makes up roughly seventy percent of everything around us.
Millions of stars
Over the last five years, the equipment has logged details on more than forty-seven million galaxies and twenty million stars.
Paul Martini from The Ohio State University helped build the tool, and he praised the global effort in a university release.
“DESI has been a superb international collaboration, and its incredibly fruitful scientific results are a leading example of its impact on the broader scientific community,” Martini said according to Ohio State News.
The project is run by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and involves more than nine hundred researchers worldwide.
Overcoming hurdles
Klaus Honscheid, another physics professor at Ohio State, highlighted his department’s massive role in building and running the equipment.
“We are proud of our collaboration’s world-leading results on dark energy, as well as pleased with the substantial, international media attention they have received.” Honscheid expressed his pride in the university statement.
The work was not without challenges, including a major wildfire in 2022 that knocked out power at the observatory.
Ashley Ross, a lead scientist on the project, explained that the team had to think on their feet to keep things moving.
What comes next
“By coming up with creative solutions to address unforeseen problems, the high-quality data we collected each night was carefully and confidently used to obtain the exciting cosmological constraints that DESI is now known for,” Ross said.
Scientists will now spend the coming months processing this massive trove of data, with final results expected in 2027.
The team also plans to keep observing the skies through 2028, turning their attention to even harder targets.
Honscheid added that this expansion will improve their dark matter research and help clarify how the cosmos actually formed.
Sources: The Ohio State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
