New Map Shows All the Matter in the Universe - Gizmodo

Researchers used data from the Dark Energy Survey and the South Pole Telescope to re-calculate the total amount and distribution of matter in the universe.

That means the South Pole Telescope observes the cosmic microwave background—the oldest radiation we can see, which dates back to about 300,000 years after the Big Bang.

“The high precision and robustness to sources of bias of the new results present a particularly compelling case that we may be starting to uncover holes in our standard cosmological model.”

The Dark Energy Survey still has three years of data to be analyzed, and a new look at the cosmic microwave background is currently being undertaken by the South Pole Telescope.

More querying of the cosmic microwave background could also help researchers deal with the Hubble tension, a disagreement between two of the best ways for measuring the expansion of the universe.

As means of observation get more precise, and more data is collected and analyzed, that information can be fed back into grand cosmological models to determine where we’ve been wrong in the past and lead us to new lines of investigation.