Research led by the University of Michigan could help put cosmology on the inside track to reaching the full potential of telescopes and other instruments studying some of the universe’s largest looming questions.

The project showcased how a new computational method gleans more information than its predecessors from maps showing how galaxies are clustered and threaded throughout the universe.

Scientists are currently using tools like DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, to generate these maps and dig deeper into the nature of dark energy, dark matter and other cosmic mysteries.

The Dark Side of Cosmology

Even as DESI makes headlines now, scientists know they will need more advanced tools to find the answers they seek. Some are developing the next generation of instruments like DESI. Minh Nguyen and his colleagues, however, are focusing on optimizing our understanding of the data we’re getting now—and in the future.“As we move to bigger and better telescopes, we might also be throwing away more information,” said Nguyen, who helped lead the work as a Leinweber Research Fellow in the U-M Department of Physics. “While we’re collecting more data, we can also try to get more out of the data.”

Teaming up with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, or MPA, Nguyen worked with a computational framework dubbed LEFTfield to upgrade how scientists analyze the large-scale structure of the cosmos.

“In the early universe, the structure was Gaussian—like the static you would see on old TV sets,” Nguyen said. “But because of the interplay between dark energy and dark matter, the large-scale structure of the universe today isn’t Gaussian anymore. It’s more like a spider web.”

Dark energy drives the expansion of the universe, but researchers can’t directly observe it, hence the “dark” part of its name. The universe’s matter works against that expansion with its attractive force of gravity.

You may read the rest of the story on the University of Michigan News website.