Closer look<\/p>\n
Found in the constellation Sextans, the area covered by the new map is a section of sky about 2.5 times larger than the full Moon. A global community of scientists have observed this region with at least 15 ground- and space-based telescopes for the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS). Their goal: to precisely measure the location of regular matter here and then compare it to the location of dark matter. The first dark matter map of the area was made in 2007 using data from NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>, a project led by Massey and JPL astrophysicist Jason Rhodes, a coauthor of the paper.<\/p>\n Webb peered at this region for a total of about 255 hours and identified nearly 800,000 galaxies, some of which were detected for the first time. Scognamiglio and her colleagues then looked for dark matter by observing how its mass curves space itself, which in turn bends the light traveling to Earth from distant galaxies. When observed by researchers, it\u2019s as if the light of those galaxies has passed through a warped windowpane.<\/p>\n The Webb map contains about 10 times more galaxies than maps of the area made by ground-based observatories and twice as many as Hubble\u2019s. It reveals new clumps of dark matter and captures a higher-resolution view of the areas previously seen by Hubble.<\/p>\n To refine measurements of the distance to many galaxies for the map, the team used Webb\u2019s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI<\/a>), designed and managed through launch by JPL, along with other space- and ground-based telescopes. The wavelengths that MIRI detects also make it adept at detecting galaxies obscured by cosmic dust clouds.<\/p>\n Why it matters<\/p>\n When the universe began, regular matter and dark matter were probably sparsely distributed. Scientists think dark matter began to clump together first and that those dark matter clumps then pulled together regular matter, creating regions with enough material for stars and galaxies to begin to form.<\/p>\n In this way, dark matter determined the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the universe. And by prompting galaxy and star formation to begin earlier than they would have otherwise, dark matter\u2019s influence also played a role in creating the conditions for planets to eventually form. That\u2019s because the first generations of stars were responsible for turning hydrogen and helium \u2014 which made up the vast majority of atoms in the early universe \u2014 into the rich array of elements that now compose planets like Earth. In other words, dark matter provided more time for complex planets to form.<\/p>\n \u201cThis map provides stronger evidence that without dark matter, we might not have the elements in our galaxy that allowed life to appear,\u201d said Rhodes. \u201cDark matter is not something we encounter in our everyday life on Earth, or even in our solar system, but it has definitely influenced us.\u201d<\/p>\n