Mysterious dark matter may be better understood through a new map of far-off galaxies
NEW YORK– A new high-resolution map of distant galaxies could help scientists understand a mysterious invisible substance that helps hold the universe together.
The ordinary matter around us – stars, planets and humans – makes up only 5% of the universe. For decades, researchers have hoped to demystify so-called dark matter, a material that makes up a little more than a quarter of our universe. Another equally mysterious force called dark energy makes up the rest.
Dark matter does not absorb or emit light, so scientists cannot study it directly. But they can observe how its gravity distorts and bends the stars around it – for example, light from distant galaxies. By studying these distortions across vast swaths of the universe, scientists can move closer to discovering dark matter and its various hiding places.
The latest map, created with images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, is the most detailed ever of such a large part of the sky. It has twice the resolution of previous attempts using the Hubble Space Telescope and captures hundreds of thousands of galaxies over the past 10 billion years.
“Now we can see everything more clearly,” said study author Diana Scognamiglio of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The latest map, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, includes information about the new galaxy clusters and the strands of dark matter that connect them. Piece by piece, these structures help to form the skeleton of the universe. Scientists can study this map to see how dark matter has clumped together over billions of years.
Dark matter doesn’t have much impact on your midday lunch order or your bedtime ritual. But it silently passes through your body all the time and has shaped the universe.
As humans, we are naturally curious to know more about where we come from and that story cannot be told without dark matter, said astrophysicist Rutuparna Das of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“Our home is the universe and we want to understand its nature,” said Das, who was not involved in the new study.
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