This is a map of the universe. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona, has finished its five-year survey. It observed more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and created a 3D map centered on the Earth. Today's featured image shows a thin slice of these data: the black gaps indicate where our Galaxy obscures distant objects. The feathery web in the inset shows the large scale structure of the universe. Light of the most distant galaxies shown here travelled for 11 billion years to reach the Earth. Galaxies cluster throughout cosmic history under the competing influences of gravity and dark energy, responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Analysis of early DESI results hinted at the possibility that dark energy, described as a cosmological constant by Albert Einstein, may not be constant after all. But we still have to wait for the analysis of the now complete dataset. The nature of dark energy is the biggest mystery of cosmology.
Very insane that we as a species (very very very small) were able to survey the (observable) universe and its structure (very very very big, far bigger than the biggest big we can big of) to such an accurate detail.
It's a piece of the universe, anyway.
Even more insane that eventually, even if life still exists, you won't be able to see ANYTHING outside your local galaxy, because all the clusters will have merged together, and there will be so much space in between that even light can't get between the galaxies anymore.
More specifically, the space in-between galaxies will be expanding so fast that light is too slow to be able to cross it. Functionally making it so there are causally separated bubble universes.