Revealing the Nature of Dark Matter with JWST and Euclid

The mysterious nature of dark matter is one of the most puzzling questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Observations on the Universe's largest scales have revealed that dark matter is approximately 85% of the Universe's total matter. Dark matter interacts via only gravitational forces, and is therefore invisible to the human eye. The remaining 15% is Baryonic matter, a type of matter that can be seen and felt on Earth via electrostatic forces.

Whilst Astronomers know that a dark matter particle exists, they have no idea what it is. This contrasts baryonic matter, where our understanding of subatomic particles like the electron and proton provide a comprehensive model of atoms that form the periodic table.

This fellowship will observe dark matter at higher resolution than ever before - quantifying the clumpiness of dark matter inside galaxies. This uses gravitational lensing, a phenomenon where light emanating from a galaxy is distorted by any mass it passes on its journey through the Universe. These distortions reveal how much dark matter is inside galaxies, therefore testing the standard "cold dark matter" paradigm's prediction that within galaxies there are thousands of individual dark matter clumps.

This project brings together cosmologists studying the Universe with healthcare researchers aiming to improve the treatment of cancers for NHS patients. The collaboration between these two seemingly opposite groups of scientists is driven by the common challenges they face in the digital era of data science; extracting meaningful information from extremely large datasets using robust and reliable statistical techniques.

This project will therefore both further our understanding of fundamental physics and help save lives on Earth.