{"id":666573,"date":"2026-05-13T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666573\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:44:08","slug":"james-webb-telescope-reveals-the-universes-hidden-cosmic-web-in-stunning-detail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666573\/","title":{"rendered":"James Webb Telescope Reveals the Universe\u2019s Hidden Cosmic Web in Stunning Detail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"COSMOS-Web<\/a>A slice through the COSMOS-Web cosmic-web map, showing galaxies across nearly 14 billion years of cosmic history. The vertex on the left marks the present day; moving outward, each galaxy is placed at its distance in cosmic time, reaching back to when the universe was less than a billion years old. Bright yellow regions show the dense clusters and filaments of the cosmic web, while dark regions mark the near-empty voids in between. Credit: Hossein Hatamnia, UC Riverside<\/p>\n

JWST has unveiled the sharpest-ever map of the universe\u2019s hidden cosmic web, reaching back nearly to cosmic dawn.<\/p>\n

Astronomers using NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST<\/a>) have created the most detailed map ever produced of the cosmic web, the enormous structure that connects galaxies across the universe. Led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, the team traced this giant network back to a period when the universe was only about one billion years old.<\/p>\n

The cosmic web is the vast, skeleton-like framework of the universe. It is made up of massive filaments and sheets of dark matter and gas that surround huge, nearly empty regions of space called voids. Together, these structures form the large-scale architecture of the cosmos, linking galaxies and galaxy clusters across immense distances.<\/p>\n

The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal, relied on the largest JWST survey ever conducted, known as COSMOS-Web. Scientists used the survey to study how galaxies have formed and evolved within this interconnected network over 13.7 billion years of cosmic history.<\/p>\n

James Webb Space Telescope Expands Our View of the Cosmos<\/p>\n

Since launching in 2021<\/a>, JWST has transformed astronomy with its exceptional sensitivity and image clarity. Its infrared instruments can detect faint, distant galaxies that earlier telescopes could not observe, allowing scientists to look farther back in time and see through clouds of cosmic dust.<\/p>\n

To take advantage of those capabilities, an international team developed COSMOS-Web, the largest General Observer (GO) program selected for JWST. The GO program is the main system astronomers use to obtain observing time on the telescope. The survey covers a continuous section of sky roughly equal to the size of three full Moons and was specifically designed to map the cosmic web.<\/p>\n

\u201cJWST has completely changed our view of the universe, and COSMOS-Web was designed from the start to give us the wide, deep view we need to see the cosmic web,\u201d said Hossein Hatamnia, a graduate student at UCR and Carnegie Observatories, and lead author of the study. \u201cFor the first time, we can study the evolution of galaxies in cluster and filamentary structures across cosmic time, all the way from when the universe was a billion years old up to the nearby universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nearby universe refers to the region within approximately 1 billion light-years of Earth. A light-year, equal to about 5.88 trillion miles, measures how far light travels in one year.<\/p>\n

Cosmic Web Map Reveals Hidden Structures<\/p>\n

Bahram Mobasher, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at UCR and Hatamnia\u2019s advisor, said the new JWST data provides a far more detailed view of large-scale cosmic structures than previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. Comparing the two datasets side by side reveals that many structures once blurred together can now be clearly separated and examined in much finer detail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jump in depth and resolution is truly significant, and we can now see the cosmic web at a time when the universe was only a few hundred million years old, an era that was essentially out of reach before JWST,\u201d Mobasher said. \u201cWhat used to look like a single structure now resolves into many, and details that were smoothed away before, are now clearly visible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hatamnia explained that the improvement comes from two key strengths of JWST working together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe telescope detects many more faint galaxies in the same patch of sky, and the distances to those galaxies are measured far more precisely,\u201d he said. \u201cEach galaxy can therefore be placed into the correct slice of cosmic time, sharpening the map\u2019s resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public Release of COSMOS-Web Data<\/p>\n

Continuing COSMOS\u2019s tradition of open science, the research team is making the large-scale structure maps publicly available.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pipeline used to build the map, the catalog of 164,000 galaxies and their cosmic density, and a video showing the cosmic web evolving across billions of years, has been released to the public,\u201d Mobasher said.<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cLarge-scale Structure in COSMOS-Web: Tracing Galaxy Evolution in the Cosmic Web up to z \u223c 7 with the Largest JWST Survey\u201d by Hossein Hatamnia, Bahram Mobasher, Sina Taamoli, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Caitlin M. Casey, Hollis B. Akins, Malte Brinch, Nima Chartab, Nicole E. Drakos, Andreas L. Faisst, Steven L. Finkelstein, Maximilien Franco, Finn Giddings, Ghassem Gozaliasl, Ali Hadi, Aryana Haghjoo, Santosh Harish, Olivier Ilbert, Pascale L. Jablonka, Shuowen Jin, Ali Ahmad Khostovan, Anton M. Koekemoer, Ronaldo Laishram, Daizhong Liu, Matteo Maturi, Henry Joy McCracken, Crystal L. Martin, Lauro Moscardini, Diana Scognamiglio, Marko Shuntov, Greta Toni, Alexander de la Vega, John R. Weaver and Lilan Yang, 6 May 2026, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847\/1538-4357\/ae5bac<\/a><\/p>\n

Scientists from the U.S., Denmark, Chile, France, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, China, Germany, and Italy also contributed to the study. The research received support from grants provided through the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.<\/p>\n

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