Researchers are using the behavior of slime mold, a strange, single-celled organism, to help map the web of dark matter filaments which make up our universe. Scientists designed a computer algorithm inspired by the unique creature to try to trace the cosmic web, which is "the large-scale backbone of the cosmos," according to a NASA press release. They applied the algorithm to data that had the positions of 37,000 galaxies, which then created a 3D map of the cosmic web's "intricate filamentary network."
