Schneibster Posted April 8, 2014 Posted April 8, 2014 (edited) This is a measure of the expansion of the universe at high redshifts (z > 2) to unprecedented accuracy: circa 2%. This is using the new Baryon Acoustic Oscillation method pioneered by BOSS, this time with three times as many individual objects measured as previously to get the original high resolution results. The current measurements use over 150,000 quasars, as opposed to the last results which used 48,000 and the original survey results which used only 16,000 quasars. "Three years ago BOSS used 14,000 quasars to demonstrate we could make the biggest 3D maps of the universe," says Berkeley Lab's David Schlegel, principal investigator of BOSS. "Two years ago, with 48,000 quasars, we first detected baryon acoustic oscillations in these maps. Now, with more than 150,000 quasars, we've made extremely precise measures of BAO." http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2014/04/07/boss-quasars-measure-expansion/ This approach obviously is one of the most effective possible, and it's good to see astronomers starting to gain the data processing expertise to identify the algorithms to achieve these results. We can look forward to surveys of this type of a million objects in the next decade (and that's pessimistic). As it is, we already have SDSS surveys with photometry of over 500 million (half a billion) objects, and spectra for over a million of them. And the surveys are automated, computerized, and ongoing. Edited April 8, 2014 by Schneibster
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