Two new maps of the distribution of galaxies in the universe, derived from data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, revealed colossal structures and supported the idea that the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy.
One of the teams, led by Chris Blake of the University of British Columbia, Canada, has created the largest map of the heavens ever produced. It includes more than a million galaxies and the farthest sits more than 5 billion light years from Earth.
The other group, led by Nikhil Padmanabhan at Princeton University in the US looked at 600,000 galaxies covering a similar region – about one-tenth of the sky. But both final maps rely on only 10,000 spectral measurements.