The Largest 3D Map of the Universe Is Shaking Cosmology to Its Foundations

The DESI Collaboration is a winner of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair for greatly advancing our understanding of how the universe began, evolved, and will continue to grow in the future.

What is the nature of our universe’s expansion, and how does dark energy come into play?

The more of the universe we map out, the less certain we seem to become about the true nature of dark energy—the force said to drive our universe’s expansion. In April of this year, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument—DESI—officially concluded its first five-year survey, producing the largest high-resolution 3D map of the universe . This map covers more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and 20 million stars over 11 billion years of cosmic history. That also represents six times as much data as all previous measurements combined.