Scale of the Universe Slowly Being Measured - Catherine Bennet

One of the most puzzling questions of all time is the question of whether the Universe could be measured or not. Basically, the universe is defined as the totality of everything that exists, has existed and ever will exist. The actual size of the Universe has been debated upon for years and years. Now, a team of researchers working with the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has determined the distances of galaxies more than 6 billion light-years away to within 1% accuracy-an unprecedented measurment. David Shlegal, physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a principal investigator of BOSS stated now that he knows the size of the universe better than he knows the size of his own house.

What the scientists did to achieve this amazing feat was that, they mapped the locations of 1.2 million galaxies and found that their new measurments support the ideas of a "cosmological constant", an idea first proposed by Albert Einstein. The cosmological constant measures the energy density in the vacuum of space. Dark energy, which is said to be the driving force of the Universe's constant expansion, has stayed the same ever since the universe began with the Big Bang. The ultra-presice new galaxy map that the researchers have formulated has said to unlock the new found potentials of dark energy. 

Part of the Galaxy map that the survey has formulated 

A new result at the 223rd meeting of the BOSS team revealed that the curvature of space was not what they had thought. In basic terms, the universe is quite "flat", now suggesting that the universe is infinite, and would continue forever in time. So what they could conclude, is that since the universe is flat, it would infact be infinite, because the results of the survey are consistent with the theory of a finite universe.

The BOSS uses a spectograph to add more stars, to slowly but precisely add on to whatever measure they have found. On a clear night, their 2.5 meter telescope situated in New Mexico can pick up 8000 new galaxies and quasers to add on to the ever expanding galaxy map. They double the size of the measured area, and add on to the new galaxies they have found, leading to more precise results. Making the measurments at two different distances helps the surveyers actually understand more about the size and the expansion of the universe. Dark energy and its opposite force, Dark matter are now being taken seriously, as they help people find out more about the Final frontier...Space.

Citation: http://www.livescience.com/42457-dark-energy-galaxy-map-aas223.html