The most detailed map of darkish matter, yet another step to know the invisible construction that helps the universe | Science | EUROtoday

Since its launch in 2021, the area telescope James Webb is unraveling a few of the universe’s most surprising mysteries. It has proven us large planets at unimaginable decision, recognized unusual pink objects which can be black holes, and offered us with the primary picture of carbon dioxide exterior the photo voltaic system. Today, Monday provides a brand new achievement: probably the most detailed map ever achieved of darkish matter, that enigmatic substance that constitutes 85% of all of the matter within the cosmos, however doesn’t emit gentle. The cartography, printed this Monday in Nature Astronomyreveals not solely the huge conglomerates of galaxies, but in addition the skinny pipes of darkish matter that join them and the empty areas between them.

An worldwide crew led by Diana Scognamiglio, a researcher at NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena (USA), used observations of the James Webb on the COSMOS discipline, a area of the universe that has been exhaustively studied for many years. The map has greater than double the precision of earlier ones generated with the telescope Hubble.

Dark matter is probably the most considerable substance within the universe and, paradoxically, probably the most mysterious. It makes up roughly 85% of all matter that exists, but it surely doesn’t emit or take in gentle and doesn’t work together with electromagnetic radiation. That’s why it’s darkish: We can not see it instantly with typical telescopes. Astronomers can solely detect it not directly, by its gravitational impact on seen matter—stars, galaxies, gasoline and dirt—and on gentle touring by the universe.

What we all know is that darkish matter kinds a form of gravitational scaffoldingl invisible that helps your entire construction of the cosmos: with out it, galaxies couldn’t type, stars wouldn’t stay of their orbits and the universe could be radically completely different. Despite a long time of analysis, scientists nonetheless do not know what precisely it’s. Mapping its distribution intimately, because the James Webbis essential to understanding how the universe was born, advanced and continues to remodel.

The technical feat of the research printed this Monday is appreciable. The crew measured the shapes of 129 galaxies utilizing a phenomenon often called weak gravitational lensing. When gentle from distant galaxies travels towards Earth, it passes by intervening darkish matter, which bends its paths barely. By measuring these tiny deviations, scientists can map the distribution of all matter, each seen and invisible.

“What makes our map special is that it detects structures at greater cosmic distances than was previously possible,” Scognamiglio explains to this newspaper. He James Webb It reveals extra distant and faint types of galaxies than its predecessors, permitting these lenses to achieve occasions when the universe was simply 4 billion years outdated.

The map printed this Monday recovers 15 already recognized galaxy clusters that have been beforehand detected. But it discovers new buildings and opens a window into the younger universe. During the period often called “cosmic noon”—when the universe was between 3 billion and 5 billion years outdated—the biggest star formation in all of cosmic historical past occurred. The buildings that James Webb detected at the moment are, in lots of instances, methods in formation that don’t but include sufficient scorching gasoline to shine with different methods, reminiscent of X-rays.

The map additionally reveals what cosmologists name the “cosmic skeleton”: skinny filaments of darkish matter that join massive clusters to one another, outlining a three-dimensional community throughout area. “These results confirm the predictions of the current cosmological model (ΛCDM) and offer a powerful tool to study how the distribution of dark matter in the universe has shaped the formation of galaxies and the large-scale structure of the cosmos,” says Alberto Casas, a researcher on the Institute of Theoretical Physics (CSIC-UAM), in Madrid, who was not concerned within the research. “This contribution possibly marks the beginning of a new era in precision cosmic mapping, which will allow us to more effectively test various theories about the nature of dark matter, a fundamental unsolved mystery,” he provides.

Scognamiglio is already engaged on the subsequent step: three-dimensional reconstructions that not solely present the place the buildings are, however after they fashioned. “The real revolution will come when we combine these dark matter maps with the detailed histories of star formation in COSMOS,” he emphasizes. “We will be able to connect how dark matter, gas and galaxies grow together during cosmic noon.”

Future missions just like the telescope Nancy Grace Roman NASA and the probe Euclid of the European Space Agency will apply these strategies to a lot bigger volumes of the universe, mapping the cosmic net at unprecedented scales.