In its day, with the number and type of known galaxies, this technique did not offer results as good as those achieved today, hence it was abandoned in favour of other methods with which it could now compete. It is based on the study of magnification bias (a weak gravitational lensing effect) that distant galaxies observed in the sub-millimetre spectrum are subject to.
This first work was only intended validate the probe's potential, although interesting results have already been obtained. In particular, it has enabled values below 0.24 to be excluded for the cosmological parameter of the density of matter and those greater than 1.0 for normalising the primordial power spectrum, which many of the main tools used up until now discarded. Now proven that it is a competitive method, researchers are already studying the different possibilities for improving the results. For example, they will go from analysing thousands of galaxies to millions, with the added difficulty that this entails.
The results of the research have come to light in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics" in an article by Laura Bonavera, Joaquín González-Nuevo, Marcos Muñiz Cueli, from the University of Oviedo ICTEA, with the participation of Cardiff University (United Kingdom), the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste and the University of Tor Vergata in Rome (Italy). The study is endorsed by the University of Oviedo's Research Support and Promotion Programme (Aid for emerging research teams' projects, PAPI-19-EMERG-11), a State Programme project for generating Knowledge and Scientific and Technological Strengthening of the R&D+i System (PGC2018-101948-B-I00) and 200,000 calculation hours in the CINECA advanced computing centre (Italy).