Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have created the clearest map ever created of the cosmic web, the vast structure that connects galaxies throughout the universe.
An international team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside has traced this vast network back to just 1 billion years after the creation of the universe.
This breakthrough result comes from COSMOS-Web, the largest survey ever conducted by JWST. Researchers analyzed more than 164,000 galaxies to reconstruct how the cosmic web evolved over the 13.7 billion year history of the universe. Their findings were published in ‘The Astrophysical Journal’.
The result is a dramatically clearer view of the large-scale structure of the universe than ever achieved before.
Previous Hubble Space Telescope observations could only hint at these formations, but the new JWST data reveals complex filaments, clusters, and hidden structures that were previously blurred or invisible.
The project involved scientists from the United States, Denmark, Chile, France, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, China, Germany, and Italy. Financial support included a grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
What is the cosmic web?
The cosmic web is the vast underlying framework of the universe. It is made up of filaments of dark matter and gas that stretch across the universe, connecting galaxies and galaxy clusters while surrounding a huge region of the sky known as the Cosmic Cavity.
Scientists describe the cosmic web as the skeleton of the universe because it shapes where galaxies form and how they evolve over time. Galaxies tend to cluster along these interconnected chains rather than being randomly scattered.
Understanding the cosmic web is considered essential to explaining how matter came together after the Big Bang and how the modern universe developed its current structure.
Why JWST changed things
Since its launch in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed astronomy through its powerful infrared imaging capabilities.
Unlike previous observatories, JWST can detect very faint and distant galaxies hidden behind cosmic dust, allowing researchers to probe deeper into the early Universe.
The COSMOS-Web project was specifically designed to take advantage of these capabilities. The survey covers an area of the sky roughly equal to three full moons, providing both the depth and wide field of view needed to map the cosmic web across cosmic time.
Researchers said the combination of JWST’s sensitivity and accuracy made the new map possible. This telescope detected much fainter galaxies in the same region of space and at the same time measured their distances more precisely.
This allowed astronomers to place galaxies at precise times in the history of the universe and reconstruct the structure of the universe in greater detail.
Previous space webmaps were missing important details
New observations reveal that previous maps vastly oversimplified the structure of the universe.
What once appeared as a single geological formation has now broken down into multiple connected structures, revealing much more complex structures within the cosmic web.
Scientists noted that early Hubble observations lacked both the depth and resolution needed to distinguish these minute details, especially in the distant early Universe. In contrast, JWST allows us to observe galaxies from an era that has previously been largely inaccessible to astronomers.
The research team said the new data now allows scientists to study how galaxies behave within galaxy clusters and filaments at different stages of cosmic evolution.
Public release makes data available to researchers around the world
In line with the COSMOS project’s long-standing open science approach, the team published a cosmic web map, analysis pipeline, and catalog containing information about 164,000 galaxies and their surrounding cosmic density.
The researchers also released a visualization showing how the cosmic web has evolved over billions of years. The open-access data is expected to support future research on galaxy formation, dark matter distribution, and the evolution of large-scale cosmic structure.
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