A slice through the three-dimensional map of the universe. We are looking out from the Milky Way, at the bottom tip of the wedge. Distances are labeled on the right in billions of light-years, and each section of the map is labeled on the left. The black dots going out to about 7 billion light-years are nearby galaxies. The red cross-hatched region could not be observed with the SDSS telescope, but the future BigBOSS survey could observe it. The colored region shows the map of intergalactic hydrogen gas in the distant universe. Red areas have more gas; blue areas have less gas. This figure is a slice through the full three-dimensional map. A. Slosar and the SDSS-III collaboration