Watch Thousands of Dancing Robots Combine on Dark Energy Instrument (Video)

[Judi Lynn]

By Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Contributor | November 5, 2018 03:25pm ET

To study what is accelerating our universe's expansion, scientists will use a new experiment with choreographed robots to watch millions of galaxies every 20 minutes.

In a video released in Oct. 4 by the Berkeley Lab at the University of California, engineers explained the ingenuity behind the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). They described DESI as a crazy machine made up of mechanical flower petals that, together, can do a grand survey of the cosmos.

The footage gives viewers a behind-the-scenes peek at the hardware's assembly. "It's really exciting to work on it," DESI Focal Plane Lead Engineer Joseph Silber said in the video. [Bringing Dark Energy Out into the Light]

Galaxies are like the streetlights of the universe, dark energy researcher Peter Behroozi said in an earlier Berkeley Lab video about DESI. Neither dark energy nor dark matter emit light, though, so looking at objects that generate optical points will help researchers learn about the unseen, Behroozi said.

More:
https://www.space.com/42342-dark-energy-millions-galaxies-desi-video.html

[Ptah]

1. Cheers for Kitt Peak.

Star trails surround the Mayall Telescope dome in this long-exposure image. The telescope is found at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. DESI, or Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will be installed within this dome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitt_Peak_National_Observatory#Photos