A Slice Through an Artificial Universe . ... To help understand these maps , astronomers computationally estimate the appearance of several possible candidate universes, to which maps of the real Universe can be compared. ... The above map corresponds to an area nearly ten billion light years across. Highlighted in red are filaments that each contain thousands of galaxies , while darker regions are nearly de void of galaxies. Our good-sized Milky Way Galaxy would hardly be visible on this map. ...