‘Invisible scaffolding of the universe’ revealed in ambitious new images from the James Webb Telescope
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The blue spots represent invisible dark matter in this portion of JWST’s impressive new matter planisphere. | Credit: NASA/STScI/J. DePasquale/A. Pagan
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have mapped the largest section of dark matter in the universe yet, deepening our understanding of how this mysterious substance shapes the cosmic landscape.
dark matter It is notoriously difficult to study because it does not interact with light. Astronomers can only detect it by observing its gravitational effects on baryonic or “ordinary” matter. Observations of these interactions reveal that there is approximately five times more dark matter in the universe than ordinary matter.
The new study, published January 26 in the journal Nature AstronomyHe drew a piece of the celestial vault in the Sextan constellation. Researchers directed JWST into this space for 255 hours, building a picture of its visible matter, including stars, galaxies and cosmic dust. From these observations, they identified almost 800,000 galaxies, 10 times more than ground-based telescopes have seen in the same region, and almost twice as many as the Hubble Space Telescope has detected there.
Next, the team mapped how this radio’s invisible dark matter mass warped space around it.
“In the past we saw a blurry image of dark matter,” Diana Scognamiglioastrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and co-senior author of the paper, said in a testimony. “We are now seeing the invisible armor of the universe in surprising detail.”
Where do galaxies come from?
Two maps showing the distribution of dark matter in the same region of the sky, created with data from JWST in 2026 (right) and Hubble in 2007 (left). Webb’s new resolution provides new insights into how dark matter influences ordinary matter in the universe. | Credit: NASA/STScI/A. Pagan
This detailed map could give scientists a better idea of how dark matter has shaped the development of the universe.
Shortly after great startdark matter and ordinary matter were probably evenly distributed throughout space. But over time, the dark matter began to clump together. This, in turn, swept ordinary matter into increasingly dense pockets, where it eventually accumulated enough mass to cause stars to form.
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In this way, dark matter played a fundamental role in creating the current layout and matter distribution of the cosmos. “This planisphere provides stronger evidence that without dark matter, we may not have the means in our galaxy that allowed life to appear,” says the study’s co-author. Jason Rhodesa senior researcher at JPL said in the statement.
Scognamiglio and his team plan to continue mapping dark matter in the future. They intend to use NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopewhose propagation is planned for the end of this year, to study a radius 4,400 times the size of the region of the new study. However, Roman’s dark matter map will be significantly less detailed than JWST’s.
