A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery

In 2005 the Sloan Digital Sky Survey burst onto the scene—an amazingly detailed new map of the universe created by a small group of visionary scientists, led by the beloved and multi-talented astronomer James Gunn—just awarded the National Medal of Science. Suddenly cosmologists were flooded with so many powerful new discoveries that, as one said, it was like drinking out of a fire hose. At last they could trace the universe’s whole history and peer into vast swaths of never before charted ...