‘Elegant’ solution reveals how universe got its structure

Washington D.C.: The universe is full of billions of galaxies — but their distribution across space is far from uniform. Why do we see so much structure in the universe today, and how did it all form and grow? A 10-year survey of tens of thousands of galaxies made using the Magellan Baade Telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile provided a new approach to answering this fundamental mystery.
The results, led by Carnegie’s Daniel Kelson, are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“How do you describe the indescribable?” asked Kelson.
“Our tactic provides new — and intuitive — insights into how gravity drove the growth of structure from the universe’s earliest times,” said co-author Andrew Benson.
“This is a direct, observation-based test of one of the pillars of cosmology,” Benson added.