Dark UNiverse Explorations

The new Special Research Area (SFB) Dark UNiverse Explorations (DUNE) of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is a collaboration between researchers from the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna, as well as the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). One of DUNE`s central goals is to learn more about dark matter and dark energy in the Universe. Together, these invisible components make up 95% of the Universe`s energy content, yet their respective physical nature remains largely unknown. Neither dark matter nor dark energy can be observed directly. Indirectly, however, they leave signatures, for example, in the distributions and properties of galaxies, in the number density of massive galaxy clusters, and in coherent distortions of the observed galaxy shapes caused by gravitational lensing. Comparing galaxy observations with theoretical models can therefore shed light on the dark components of the Universe. DUNE uses observational data from two new space telescopes: The European Space Agency`s (ESAs) Euclid mission was launched in July 2023 and is expected to deliver high-resolution images of more than a third of the night sky by the end of the decade. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a joint project of NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), allows scientists to peer deep into the past of the Universe in small regions of the sky. As part of international research collaborations, the DUNE team analyzes Euclid data at the University of Innsbruck and observational data from the JWST at the ISTA. To draw conclusions about the properties of dark matter and dark energy, the observational results are compared with simulated "virtual universes". These simulations are (co-)developed at the University of Vienna and model cosmic structure formation in these digital reconstructions of our universe: COLIBRE is a simulation project that includes a small number of highly detailed simulations. Complementary to this are the simulations from the DISCO-DJ project, which can quickly make predictions for many different theories and utilize the new Austrian supercomputer MUSICA. DUNE opens a new window to the dark Universe for Austria and brings us one step closer to answering some of the biggest questions in modern cosmology. Links: - COLIBRE: www.colibre-simulations.org - Euclid: https://www.euclid-ec.org/ , https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid - JWST: https://esawebb.org/, https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/ - DISCO-DJ: https://cosmology.univie.ac.at, https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.