A team of astronomers from Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology has utilized imaging data from the James Webb Space Telescope to measure the shapes of approximately 250,000 galaxies, reconstructing the most detailed map of mass in a contiguous region of the universe to date. This reveals how dark matter has shaped the evolution of galaxies over the past 10 billion years. The map boasts more than double the resolution of previous ones and extends further back into the universe’s earlier evolutionary stages, providing a benchmark for studying the nature of dark matter and modeling the galactic environment during the peak era of star formation (roughly 11 to 8 billion years ago). The research team believes this map will be a valuable resource for studying galactic evolution and the formation of cosmic structures.