George edited subsectionAims__To_u.tex  about 8 years ago

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The discovery in the 1990s that the Universe's expansion is accelerating fundamentally  changed our understanding not just of how the Universe will evolve but also raised questions  about its composition.  Large galaxy surveys such as the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, performed at the   Anglo-Australian telescope in New South Wales, Sloan Digital Sky Survey have  mapped the positions in the sky of extremely large numbers millions  of nearby galaxies, and show that rich, complex structure exists on even the largest scales. Our inability to replicate the Universe within the confines of a laboratory makes  doing accurate Cosmology inherently difficult, and it is hoped that this  practical exercise will give you an appreciation for the power and limitations of 

separated by relatively empty `voids'.  The network of filaments and voids form what is known as the `Cosmic Web', itself  a relatively recent and extremely important discovery in cosmology.  In Figure 3 we show an image of the cosmic web constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky 2dF Galaxy Redshift  Survey, a survey performed at the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales  which measured the positions and redshifts (a cosmological unit of distance) of millions of several hundred thousand  galaxies.