🌅 The Most Detailed Map of Dark Matter Ever Created

SOURCE

Scognamiglio et al. (2026)

WHAT TO KNOW

• An international team of researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to create the largest and most detailed map of dark matter ever produced, revealing how the invisible scaffolding of the universe overlaps and intertwines with regular matter, the stuff that makes up stars, galaxies, and everything else we can see, touch, or interact with in the observable universe. The new map includes around 800,000 identified galaxies, roughly ten times more than earlier ground-based observations of the same region and twice as many as observations produced by the Hubble Space Telescope.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Dark matter is the name given to the invisible “glue” that holds the universe together and makes up most of the matter within it (about 27% of the matter in the universe is dark matter, compared to just 5% that’s regular matter; the rest is believed to be made of mysterious dark energy). The work confirms earlier research and reveals new details about the role dark matter played in shaping the universe. The authors say the close alignment revealed by the map between dark matter and regular matter suggests dark matter’s gravitational pull has drawn regular matter toward it throughout all of cosmic history.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Scientists believe dark matter and regular matter were thinly distributed when the universe began, and dark matter started clumping together first. Those dark matter clumps then pulled in regular matter, creating the dense regions where stars and galaxies began to form. In this way, dark matter actually determined the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the universe. The authors of the present study say their map goes beyond previous work and provides strong evidence that without dark matter, the elements necessary for life might not have formed within our galaxy.