Voiager
Void dynamics and geometry explorer (Voiager, or short Vger) provides a framework to perform cosmological analyses using voids identified in large-scale structure survey data. The code measures dynamic and geometric shape distortions in void stacks and propagates them to constraints on cosmological parameters using Bayesian inference. More detailed information on this method can be found under Publications.
Note
Voiager is an homage to NASA’s Voyager program. The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their nearly 50-year journey since their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto.
“Voyager did things no one predicted, found scenes no one expected, and promises to outlive its inventors. Like a great painting or an abiding institution, it has acquired an existence of its own, a destiny beyond the grasp of its handlers.” — Stephen J. Pyne
Note
Vger, the abbreviation for Voiager, is an homage to Star Trek: the center of the enormous vessel contained the oldest part of V’ger – Voyager 6, an unmanned deep space probe launched by NASA in the late 20th century. The entire vessel surrounding the Voyager probe had been built by an unknown race of machine entities (possibly the Borg) in order to help it complete what the latter interpreted to be its primary programming: “learn all that is learnable”, and return that knowledge to its creator. During its journey, the probe had come to think of itself as V’ger after the only remaining legible letters from its original name (the “O”, “Y”, “A”, and “6” on the nameplate having been obscured from encounters with previous spatial hazards), and amassed knowledge to such a degree as to become self-aware.
“On its journey back, it amassed so much knowledge, it achieved consciousness itself. It became a living thing.” — James T. Kirk, 2270s