Ooo la la! A map of the universe in 3D

A team of astronomers have created a video of an incredibly detailed 3-D model of the known universe, and by known they mean that they have only gone 1 percent of the way out. If you are feeling lonely and insignificant today, and have trouble understanding a thick French accent, maybe you should skip it, oui?

“I’d like to think this is the first of more ventures along the same line,” said University of Hawaii astrophysicist R. Brent Tully, who was treated to a public presentation of the work for his 70th birthday, in Paris, a week ago, according to the LA Times article. “I think we’re learning how to do it. I think the next time around we’ll do it better.”

Few people know the known universe quite like Tully, who mapped it in 1987, on paper. “I don’t know anybody else who’s tried to put something on paper,” Tully said.



(Tully is best known for the Tully-Fisher relation, which correlates a spiral galaxy’s luminosity and rotational speed, and was published with J. Richard Fisher in 1977. It’s a key tool for measuring distances by comparing the intrinsic brightness of a galaxy with its apparent magnitude – how bright it appears.)

What’s not seen is what is most astonishing about the map, which manages to represent aspects of the universe that can only be inferred from data. In this animated view of the universe, whole galaxies are mere “lighthouses” that formed in the gravitational wells of dark matter in a universe of clusters, filaments and voids.

“We actually don’t know how big the whole universe is,” said Tully. “What we talk about is the universe within our horizon, the travel time of light, and that’s been traveling to us since 14 billion years – actually, in that time the universe has expanded, so we have access to something like 40 billion light-years.”

By the way if you are wondering, we are the millionth planet to the left.