A multinational scientific collaboration has released the largest map of the universe, revealing nearly 800,000 galaxies spanning over 13.5 billion years of cosmic time. The COSMOS-Web field project, built with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), challenges existing notions of the infant universe.
The project’s goal was to construct a deep field of space on a physical scale that far exceeded anything done before. According to UC Santa Barbara physics professor Caitlin Casey, who co-leads the collaboration, the image is slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, covering about 98% of all cosmic time.
The researchers aimed to see not only the most distant galaxies but also the wider view of cosmic environments that existed during the early universe. Instead, they found a “big surprise” with JWST’s data, revealing roughly 10 times more galaxies than expected at these incredible distances.
Astronomers are now faced with new questions, including how to make stars form in just 400 million years after the Big Bang and what exactly is causing too much light. The dataset has sparked hopes that other astronomers can further refine our understanding of the early universe and its mysteries, such as dark matter and physics of the early universe.
The project’s open science approach aims to democratize access to data from the best telescopes, making it possible for researchers worldwide to contribute to the field. As the exploration continues, the team plans to return to the deep field to further map and study it, using techniques such as spectroscopy to verify the distance of these distant galaxies.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2025-06-largest-universe-revealing-galaxies-early.html