🕸️The Universe Hid Its Biggest Secret… Until Scientists Asked a Slime Mold
For decades, astronomers have searched for the Cosmic Web—the vast network of dark matter and faint hydrogen gas that connects galaxies across the Universe. But tracing it was nearly impossible because dark matter is invisible.

Scientists found inspiration in slime mold, a single-celled organism that naturally builds the shortest and most efficient networks while searching for food. They realized its patterns closely resemble the Cosmic Web.

Using a computer algorithm inspired by slime mold, researchers analyzed the positions of 37,000 galaxies to predict where the Universe’s hidden filaments should be.

They then tested the prediction with Hubble observations of 350 distant quasars. Hubble detected hidden hydrogen gas exactly where the algorithm had predicted, providing one of the strongest confirmations yet that galaxies are connected by an enormous Cosmic Web—the invisible backbone of our Universe.
Credit: Nasa