Cosmic Ruler: Inflection Point Instead of Peak ⚡ экспресс
Scientists have found a new way to measure distances in the Universe, using special points in the distribution of galaxies — the 'linear point'. This method is more accurate than the old one because it suffers less from distortions. Imagine that instead of a blurred shadow, you use the sharp outline of an object to determine its size more precisely. It's intriguing: could this change our understanding of the cosmos?
There's no tool to measure distances to faraway galaxies, but nature left a clue: after the Big Bang, sound waves created rhythmic clumps of matter. Today, this is noticeable as a slight preference for galaxies to be at a certain distance from each other — a built-in ruler. Over cosmic time, the pattern blurs, like a sand dune in the wind: the sharp peak on the distance graph becomes a gentle slope, but its steepest part barely moves. This inflection point — the linear point — more reliably preserves the imprint of the early universe.
Data from the DESI project, mapping millions of galaxies, confirmed its advantages. After reconstruction, which partially cleans the signal from late-time distortions, measurement precision improved by 15–60%. A small correction for the galaxy sample composition, accounting for dark matter and gravity, yielded perfect agreement with traditional measurements. Thus, the linear point becomes a new tool for hunting dark energy and understanding the future of the universe's expansion.
🎯 The theoretical idea has been around since the 2010s, but only DESI's unprecedented maps allowed it to be used with sub-percent precision — and it turned out that the inflection point is more informative than the blurred peak.