CANBERRA – Scientists have produced the largest map yet of the Universe's magnetic fields, revealing an invisible cosmic web shaping galaxy formation and evolution.

The map, known as SPICE-RACS, is five times larger than previous efforts and draws on observations from the ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia, said a statement of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, which operated the telescope.

The new map was produced by an international team led by researchers at CSIRO and the SKA Observatory (SKAO), an intergovernmental organization building two of the world's largest radio telescopes.

ALSO READ: Observatory unravels key mystery of cosmic ray formation

The scale and density of the map help scientists better understand how energy is distributed across the Universe, said lead researcher Alec Thomson, commissioning scientist with SKAO.

"For the first time, we can investigate fine details of the material between nearby stars, and study a huge number of distant galaxies," Thomson said.

Researchers analyzed signals from nearly four million galaxies, measuring how light is twisted as it travels through magnetic fields – a phenomenon known as rotation measure – to trace their location and relative strength. The results have been made publicly available through CSIRO's data portal.

READ MORE: China's giant radio telescope observations unravel origin of cosmic enigmatic flashes

Magnetic fields influence how galaxies grow, how matter moves through space, and how the Universe has evolved over billions of years.

SKAO Chief Scientist Naomi McClure-Griffiths said the new map enables long-standing questions to be addressed, including how magnetic fields influence interactions between the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies, and when such fields first emerged.

"For the past 20 years, we have been working with essentially the same data set, which didn't even cover the southern sky. Now, we can finally answer some big questions with a much better picture of the Universe's magnetic structures," McClure-Griffiths said.