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Amazing video takes you on a flight through a slice of the universe

Here's a special way to celebrate Pi Day today: Take a simulated flight through a slice of the known universe, zipping past galaxies that have been mapped out in detail using what astronomers have collected from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) Survey.

Posted by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research:

The Galaxy and Mass Assembly catalogue is a detailed map of the Universe showing where galaxies are in 3D. This simulated flythrough shows the real positions and images of the galaxies that have been mapped so far. Distances are to scale, but the galaxy images have been enlarged for your viewing pleasure.

That's pretty incredible, and they've put together other videos and images from the data as well (including some very cool 3D, rotating ones showing the distribution and sizes of galaxies). What's even more incredible, though, is that even with the number of galaxies represented in this video, it's only a very small slice of the known universe!

[ More Geekquinox: Happy Pi Day: Eat a piece of pie to celebrate mathematics on 3/14 ]

The GAMA Survey has made some amazing discoveries since it started up in 2008, and recently it uncovered yet another type of 'structure' in the universe.

Maps of the galaxies so far have shown that they tend to cluster, forming long strands that connect together in a cosmic web. The 'voids' between the strands are mostly empty, and astronomers have been trying to understand them and the few relatively-lonely galaxies that inhabit them. Just recently, though, the survey found that these galaxies aren't so lonely after all. They actually appear to be arranged together in short stings, branching off from the main strands of the web, that the researchers call 'tendrils.' This shrinks the size of the voids (or at least how big we thought the voids were), and adds yet another level of complexity to this amazing universe.

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