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Nature 410, 153-154 (8 March 2001) | doi:10.1038/35065762

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Cosmology: Weighing the Universe

Marc Davis

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How do you measure the mass of the Universe? You can't use a balance to weigh it, but detailed analysis of hundreds of thousands of galaxies provides an alternative answer.

Cosmology has historically been considered a branch of philosophy rather than physics because of the dearth of data. But there has been dramatic progress in the past few years, and it is now entering an era of large-scale studies and precise measurements.