快猫短视频s have created the best ever map of dark matter using subtle distortions in the shape of about 250,000 galaxies. It could help us understand some of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos.

Dark matter is extraordinarily hard to map because, true to its name, it doesn鈥檛 emit any light that we can detect. It only interacts with regular matter through its gravitational pull, so that is what researchers use to figure out where it is. at Northeastern University in Massachusetts and her colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to do so, examining an area of sky slightly bigger than the full moon.

鈥淚t is a very high-resolution picture of the scaffolding of this little corner of the universe,鈥� says McCleary. The resolution of the map is about twice as high as previous ones made with the Hubble Space Telescope, and it includes structures much further from Earth.

To make this map, the researchers examined the shapes of about 250,000 galaxies 鈥� but it isn鈥檛 their intrinsic shape that is interesting. 鈥淭hose galaxies are basically the cosmic wallpaper,鈥� says at the University of Minnesota, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the analysis. Instead, what鈥檚 important is how the gravity of dark matter between the telescope and the 鈥渨allpaper鈥� warps the light of the galaxies, in a process called gravitational lensing: the further the average shape of the distant galaxies is from circular, the more dark matter lies between them and us.

By analysing these differences in shape, the researchers mapped out huge clusters of galaxies, along with the filaments of the cosmic web that connects them. Some of these structures didn鈥檛 match up with anything we had previously seen while observing regular, or luminous, matter, indicating that they must be dominated by dark matter. 鈥淭o identify many of these structures over a wide field, gravitational lensing is one of very, very few techniques, and definitely the best,鈥� says Williams.

This is important because dark matter makes up about 85 per cent of the total matter in the universe, so it is crucial to the evolution of not only galaxies and galaxy clusters, but also the cosmos as a whole. Building a map of its distribution could help us nail down how it behaves and what exactly it is made of, says Williams.

Free newsletter

Sign up to Launchpad

Sign up to newsletter

Is our cosmos just a membrane on the edge of a far stranger reality?

String theory may be our best attempt at a theory of everything, except that it can't describe an expanding universe like ours. Now a radical new twist on the idea could finally fix that 鈥� but it requires us to completely reimagine reality

鈥淣ot only is it an observational coup, but in turn it鈥檚 going to enable a lot of other analysis 鈥� cosmological parameter constraints, the connection between galaxies and their dark matter haloes and how they grow and evolve over time,鈥� says McCleary. These cosmological parameters include the strength of dark energy, the mysterious force causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.

For now, it appears that the JWST map matches our current standard model of the universe, known as lambda-CDM, but there are many in-depth investigations of the data yet to be done that are certain to provide new insights, says McCleary. 鈥淎lthough at a glance it鈥檚 a match for lambda-CDM, I鈥檓 not giving up yet 鈥� I鈥檓 withholding judgment until our analysis is finished.鈥�