Webb's Most Detailed Dark Matter Map Yet Shows 800K Galaxies In Stunning Clarity

Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have been able to compile the most detailed map of dark matter ever produced, exposing the ghostly scaffolding that has guided the growth of our universe for billions of years.

Published in the Nature journal, the image is a high-definition look at the distribution of dark matter across a patch of sky known as the COSMOS (Cosmic Evolution Survey Deep Field) field. While dark matter neither emits nor reflects light, Webb was able to see it by observing how its massive gravitational pull warps the light of nearly 800,000 distant galaxies. Paying attention to weak gravitational lensing, the ...