Wow. There really isn't a big enough deal being made about the fact that we even have the capability of mapping 1/4 of the freaking universe. Even if it's only on a galaxial scale, that's astonishing.
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It's because we didn't have to blow anything/anyone up to do it.
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Edited by The Cellar Door: 7/21/2016 1:51:41 AMWell, technically speaking, we could map the entire universe, we just don't have computers that could handle that much information all at once. Also, as far as mapping goes, this is sort of like if we sent a bunch of boats that could only move forward out to sea from a single point, and "mapped" a coastline by judging how long it took the boats to smash into it. There is a lot of heavy math actually that goes into massaging a picture into looking like what we have in this article, or really any image you see of space. Nevertheless, it's still very humbling, and a fantastic feat of space observation. I'm just saying the ability to do this for the entire observable universe is limited by our computational power rather than observational ability. In the quantum age of computing, the rendering of this map would take hours, rather than the months the team probably spent rendering it.
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How do they map it? Do they use radio signals?
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Well, it's a little bit of different concept. This was done with an optical telescope measuring spectra. Think of a still pond, with boats on it, and then think a boat moving through it. Now, this movement is going to cause a wake, which is then going to ripple off of everything else on the surface of the lake. By understanding how this is ripple effect works, we can understand the density of certain areas versus others. Given, this is not relatively easy to do since every "boat" in the water we're talking about is moving at the same time, but basically we can understand the positions of our "boats" because of how the strength of the waves change in regards to what those waves interact with. I'm no expert though, so if you wanted to look more into this, I would google, "Baryonic acoustic oscillations," or "SDSS"
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Edited by whoops: 7/21/2016 10:41:41 AMMy brain hurts, I think I almost learnt something
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[quote]Wow. There really isn't a big enough deal being made about the fact that we even have the capability of mapping 1/4 of the freaking universe. Even if it's only on a galaxial scale, that's astonishing.[/quote]