Researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK have employed an innovative web of supercomputer to look at inscrutable component part of the creation known asdark vigour and dark matter .

The team usedGridPP , the British part of a European internet that was used in the uncovering of the Higgs boson , to take to the woods image processing and a automobile learning algorithm . The goal was to measure the cosmic shear , also known as weak gravitational lensing , an seeming aberration   in the shape of galaxies due to play up black matter bending their light .

GridPP was fed image from theDark Energy Survey , which is mapping hundreds of millions of galaxies and looking for rule in the cosmic structure . This study is a precursor to more intensive work that   will be possible to do with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope ( LSST ) presently under construction in Chile .

“ Our overall aim is to tackle the mystery of the dark universe – and this pilot project has been hugely important , ” Professor Sarah Bridle say in astatement . “ When the LSST is full operating researchers will present a galactic data deluge – and our work will prepare us for the analytical challenge ahead . ”

This computational approach , nicknamedIM3SHAPE , will have to treat with the 200 Petabyte ( 200 billion Megabytes ) of data from the LSST when it becomes usable in 2023 . It can farm shear analysis on vast picture with an unprecedented speed .

The cosmic shear is nothing like the beautiful arcs seen in strong gravitational lens . It is a small distortion and it would go unnoticed on a individual coltsfoot . But if many background galaxies look to all be distort in the same means , it tell us there ’s something we can not see in front of them .

That something is what we call colored matter , a mystifying substance that only interacts with gravitational force and not with the other forces . grim matter excuse why galaxies have sure shapes and , although other theories have been declare oneself , it remain the most robust account .

But when cosmic shear is estimated in 3D , it can also be used to see out the properties of the other mysterious component of the universe : dark vim . The universe is expanding at an accelerated charge per unit and the movement of it seems to be dark energy . We do n’t know much more than that , but these subject field will hopefully bring forth a secure apprehension of the benighted universe .