Galaxy patterns reveal missing link to Big Bang

Australian astronomers from the Anglo-Australian Observatory, The Australian
National University, CSIRO and the University of New South Wales, together
with their UK colleagues, today announced that they have found the 'missing
link' that directly relates modern galaxies like our own Milky Way to the
Hot Big Bang that created our Universe 14 thousand million years ago.

This is the result of a 10-year effort to map the 3D distribution in space
of 220,000 galaxies using the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in New
South Wales - a project called the 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey
(2dFGRS).

This survey was almost ten times larger than any previous such study.

It measured in detail patterns in the distribution of galaxies, on scales
from 100 million to 1 billion light-years.

Subtle features in these patterns were set by physical processes that
operated when the Universe was very young, and reveal the 'missing link'
between present-day galaxies and the Big Bang.

"This is an enormously important finding," said Dr Matthew Colless, Director
of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and Australian leader of the 2dFGRS
team. "Although there have been hints before of these features, this is the
first high-confidence detection. We've confirmed that gravity was the
driving force that created today's galaxies."

"The same features tell us the mass density of the Universe - the amount of
mass for a given volume of space - with an uncertainty of less than 10%."

"This survey, coupled with a few other lines of enquiry, has given us
extremely good measurements of two major constituents of the Universe - its
dark matter and dark energy," said 2dFGRS team member Dr Warrick Couch of
the University of New South Wales.

Measuring the galaxies' s distances and modelling their distribution in
space had taken "more than a decade of work" by a team of over 30 people,
said Dr Bruce Peterson of the ANU's Research School of Astronomy and
Astrophysics, the 2dFGRS team member who constructed the database for the
survey.

Independent corroboration of the 2dFGRS result was also announced today by
the US-led Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), at the winter meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in San Diego. The SDSS team used a sample of
46,000 highly luminous red galaxies and a different method of analysis from
the 2dFGRS team's. "Happily, the two groups' conclusions are consistent,"
said 2dFGRS team member Dr Joss Hawthorn of the Anglo-Australian
Observatory.

The robotic 2dF instrument, which made the survey possible, was designed and
built by the Anglo-Australian Observatory. It measures the 'redshifts' of
galaxies - a change in the light they emit that varies with distance, and
which can be used as a measure of distance. "The 2dF instrument is the
world's most efficient machine for measuring redshifts," said 2dFGRS team
member Dr Russell Cannon, a former director of the Anglo-Australian
Observatory during whose term the 2dFGRS had been initiated.

Matching ripples

Theorists in the 1960s suggested that the primordial seeds of galaxies
should be seen as 'ripples' - a pattern of hotter and cooler spots - in the
cosmic microwave background (CMB). This CMB is heat radiation left over from
the Big Bang. We see the CMB as it was when the Universe was only about
350,000 years old.

The ripples in the CMB were first seen in 1992 by NASA's COBE satellite. But
until now, no-one had been able to definitely show how they were connected
to galaxy formation.

Astronomers use a statistic called the 'power spectrum' to mathematically
describe the pattern of spots in the CMB. A plot of the power spectrum has
peaks and troughs in it, and describes how the spots are clustered on
different scales. The 2dFGRS team has produced the same kind of power
spectrum for the galaxies that it mapped out.

"Features in the 2dFGRS power spectrum match up with features in the power
spectrum of the CMB," said 2dFGRS team member Dr Simon Driver of the ANU's
Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "This leaves no doubt that
we've finally identified the origin of galaxies."

Weighing the Universe

The same features in the power spectrum have allowed the 2dFGRS team to
'weigh' the Universe with unprecedented accuracy.

These features - called the 'baryon wiggles' - contains information about
the contents of the Universe; in particular about the amount of ordinary
matter - particles called baryons - that makes up stars, planets and people.

The 2dFGRS has shown that baryons are a small component of our Universe,
making up a mere 18% of the total mass. The remaining 82% is dark matter.
For the first time, the 2dFGRS team have measured the density of matter in
the Universe with an uncertainty of less than 10%.

Furthermore, the 2dFGRS has also shown that all the mass in the Universe
(both luminous and dark) is outweighed 4:1 by an even more exotic component
called 'vacuum energy' or 'dark energy'. This has antigravity properties,
causing the expansion of the Universe to speed up. This conclusion comes
from combining 2dFGRS results with data on the cosmic microwave background
radiation. The origin and identity of the dark energy remains one of the
deepest mysteries of modern science.

Astronomers believe they could find clues to the identity of dark energy by
identifying baryon wiggles in the pattern of galaxies that existed when the
Universe was half its present age. They are now planning huge galaxy surveys
to do this. "The Anglo-Australian Observatory has a radical new design
concept for an instrument to make such a mega-survey," said Dr Hawthorn.

NOTES

The 2dF Instrument

Designed and built by the Anglo-Australian Observatory, the 2dF system is
one of the world's most complex astronomical instruments, able to capture
400 spectra simultaneously. A robot arm positions up to 400 optical fibres
on a field plate, each to within an accuracy of 20 micrometres. Light from
up to 400 objects is collected and fed into two spectrographs for analysis.
The expansion of the Universe shifts galaxy spectra to longer wavelengths.
By measuring this 'redshift' in a galaxy's spectrum, the galaxy's distance
can be determined.

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey used the 2dF system to cover a total area of
about 2,000 square degrees, selected from both northern and southern skies.
It used about 250 nights observing time on the 3.9m-diameter
Anglo-Australian Telescope during 1995-2002.

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey is nearly ten times larger than the surveys
that preceded it.

2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey Team

Members of the team are based at the following institutions:
Anglo-Australian Observatory, The Australian National University, California
Institute of Technology, CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility, ETH
Zurich, Johns Hopkins University, Liverpool John Moores University, Queen's
University, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, University
College London, University of Durham, University of Edinburgh, University of
Leeds, University of New South Wales, University of Nottingham, University
of Oxford.

IMAGES

http://www.aao.gov.au/press/2dfgrs_wiggles.html

PUBLICATION

A paper on the finding, "The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Power-spectrum
analysis of the final dataset and cosmological implications", will be posted
on the astrophysics preprint server (Australian mirror site,
http://au.arxiv.org/archive/astro-ph), and will also be available at
http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/2dFGRS/Public/Publications/power-spectrum_cosmology.pdf .
It has been submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society for publication.

A meeting to review the successes of 2dF will be held at the RAS on January
13 and 14th. See http://www.ras.org.uk/html/meetings/RAS2004.html#jan for
details.

CONTACTS

In the UK:

Dr Matthew Colless, Director, Anglo-Australian Observatory (Australian team
leader of the 2dFGRS collaboration)
+44-795-849-8591 (mob.)
11 and 12 January
Day: Oxford University, Denys Wilkinson Building +44-1865-273-310
Evening: St Peter's College, Oxford +44-1865-278-900
director@aaoepp.aao.gov.au

Professor John Peacock, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh (UK
team leader of the 2dFGRS collaboration)
+44-131-668-8100 (office) +44-7946-273-597 (mob.)
jap@roe.ac.uk

Dr Shaun Cole, Institute for Computational Cosmology,
Department of Physics, University of Durham (lead author for this analysis)
+44-191-334-3593, Shaun.Cole@durham.ac.uk

In Australia:

Dr Joss Hawthorn, Anglo-Australian Observatory
02-9960-6553 (home) 0404-858-054 (mob.)
jbh@aaoepp.aao.gov.au

Dr Russell Cannon, Anglo-Australian Observatory
02-9876-8117 (home) 0402-096-258 (mob.)
rdc@aaoepp.aao.gov.au

Dr Bruce Peterson, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The
Australian National University
02-6125-8035 (office) 0413-967-397 (mob.) 02-6231-2971 (home)
peterson@mso.anu.edu.au

Dr Simon Driver, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The
Australian National University
02-6125-0222 (office) 02-6231-3120 (home)
spd@mso.anu.edu.au

Dr Warrick Couch, University of New South Wales
02-9385-4578 (office) 0413-011-371 (mob.)
w.couch@unsw.edu.au

Public Relations and Media Liaison
Helen Sim
CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility
Helen.Sim@csiro.au
and Anglo-Australian Observatory
hsim@aaoepp.aao.gov.au
+61-2-9372-4261 (office) +61-419-635-905 (mob)

hsim@aaoepp.aao.gov.au
12-Jan-2005