3-D atlas of the universe
At the Starmus science conference, commencing 2 July, in Tenerife Spain, Professor Stephen Hawking will announce plans to map the entire known universe using COSMOS, the supercomputing centre dedicated to the research of cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics. It was founded in January 1997 by a consortium of leading UK cosmologists and brought together by Hawking. The COSMOS computer will plot the position and movement of billions of galaxies, black holes, supernovas and other cosmic structures. Additional data will be used from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planck satellite and the Dark Energy Survey. The former providing images of the oldest light in the cosmos and the latter the expansion of the universe over the course of the last 10 billion years which will allow the COSMOS team to compare the early distribution of matter in the universe with its subsequent expansion. The project will also be using information gained from the ESA’s Euclid probe, tasked with measuring the shapes and redshifts of galaxies, which is scheduled for launch in 2020.
