UNDARK is a pioneering project led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) bringing together outstanding international institutions in the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, and particle physics. Funded for three years via the 'Widening' programme of the European Union, its objective is to tackle one of the major puzzles of contemporary physics: the dark universe. The major part of the Cosmos is composed by the so-called “dark universe”. Barely 18% of the total matter in the universe is made up of the elements in atoms with which we are familiar, while the remaining 82%, termed

An observationally based study, led by Martín López Corredoira, researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has found that certain very distant massive galaxies appear to be older than the limit set by standard cosmology. The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, is based on the analysis of data recently obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope of galaxies that existed when the universe was only between 4% and 5% of its present age, according to the accepted standard model of cosmology. The researchers infer that the mean age of some of these galaxies would not be

Gravity has shaped our cosmos. Its attractive influence turned tiny differences in the amount of matter present in the early universe into the sprawling strands of galaxies we see today. A new study using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has traced how this cosmic structure grew over the past 11 billion years, providing the most precise test to date of gravity at very large scales. DESI is an international collaboration of more than 900 researchers, included the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), from over 70 institutions around the world and is managed by