(PhysOrg.com) -- Today’s most powerful telescopes collect huge amounts of data from the most distant locations of the universe – yet much of the information is simply discarded because it involves small length scales that are difficult to model. In an effort to waste less data from cosmological surveys, a team of scientists has developed a new technique that allows researchers to use otherwise unusable data by "clipping" some of the highest density peaks, which present the greatest challenge to models. This data could provide a way to address some unsolved problems in physics, including estimating the neutrino mass and investigating theories of modified gravity.

In an attempt to decode this small-scale data, the researchers developed the density “clipping” technique, which makes the data accessible to modeling.

“By applying a simple correction to the very densest regions of a simulated patch of the Universe, just 0.1% of the volume, we found that this removes most of this unpredictable behavior,” Simpson said. “We have now demonstrated that a great deal of information from these smaller scales can be successfully extracted.”