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  • Scientists just mapped a huge part of our universe and found out

  • Einstein is always right.

  • Hi there cosmic entities!

  • Ian here for DNews…. and prepare to have your mind BLOWN.

  • Researchers have created an incredible 3-dimensional map of a region of the universe.

  • As part of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, or BOSS,

  • they pinpointed a whopping 1.2 million galaxies covering a quarter of

  • the visible sky!

  • It's a volume that is about 650 cubic billion light years big.

  • Within that huge expanse, astronomers start to see the large-scale structure of the cosmos

  • between two to seven billion light-years away.

  • In other words, they're spying on the universe as it was two to seven billion years AGO.

  • And it just so happens that this is an important era to study if we are to understand the strange

  • effects of dark energy.

  • Now, dark energy makes up for 70% of ALL the energy in the universe and has a bizarre anti-gravity

  • effect on space-time, causing it to expand.

  • And the expansion is accelerating.

  • So cosmologists REALLY want to know what dark energy IS and how it's going to shape the

  • evolution of the universe.

  • In an effort to get to grips with this mysterious energy, astronomers need to think really big,

  • capturing the motion of a HUGE number of galaxies.

  • This is where BOSS comes in.

  • Now...things get a little more complicated.

  • So bear with me.

  • At the moment of the Big Bang, 13.82 billion years ago, there was just energy.

  • As time went on, the universe expanded and cooled and matter started to condense to form

  • the quarks, atoms, electrons and all that other good stuff our universe contains.

  • During this early time, baryon acoustic oscillations, or BAOs, rippled through the early universe.

  • You can imagine these BAOs as a bit like sound waves traveling through a gas.

  • They created regions of dense matter and regions empty of matter.

  • The BAOs started out small, but as the universe expanded, they expanded with it and became

  • larger, leaving their fingerprint in the structure of the universe.

  • As this happened, clusters of galaxies formed inside the high density regions caused by

  • the BAOs.

  • The most incredible thing is that BOSS can SEE the BAOs in the galaxies recorded in this

  • massive 3D map.

  • But what does this mean?

  • Well, in this new research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical

  • Society, astronomers have specifically looked back into the time when it is theorized that

  • dark energy really took hold of universal expansion, causing vast galactic clusters

  • to fly away from one another.

  • By studying those 1.2 million galaxies that existed between 2 to 7 billion years ago,

  • and recording the distance between the dense clusters, we can see how fast the universe

  • expanded under the force of dark energy.

  • And it appears the universe is expanding in PRECISELY the way we THEORIZED, with dark

  • energy continually stretching spacetime while the gravity of dark matter is trying to pull

  • it all back in again.

  • This gives us further evidence for the existence of dark matter AND dark energy.

  • But do you want to know the best thing?

  • By studying the motions of so many galaxies over such a huge volume, this research has

  • shown that general relativity holds true over cosmological scales.

  • Yes, Einstein's theory has been proven correct again.

  • Shocker.

  • Want to know more about some of BOSS's awesome finds?

  • Watch my recent DNews video to find out more about how its discoveries are challenging

  • our views of the cosmos

  • Does dark energy freak you out, just a little?

  • Let us know in the comments down below and don't forget to subscribe to DNews!

Scientists just mapped a huge part of our universe and found out

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