Scientific advancements in cosmic mapping and glacier thickness modeling

An international team of astronomers, including members from the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), has completed a detailed three-dimensional and dynamic mapping of the Vela Supercluster. Located in the ‘Zone of Avoidance’—a region obscured by the Milky Way’s dust and stars—the structure features a dual-core configuration. It extends over 220 million light-years and has an estimated mass of 340 quadrillion solar masses, comparable to the Shapley Supercluster.

The study utilized redshift measurements and peculiar velocity analysis, aided significantly by the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, which provided over 2,000 of the 8,000 redshifts used to penetrate galactic dust.

In a separate scientific development, researchers from Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the CNR-Isp have developed IceBoost v2.0, a machine learning model designed to map global glacier thickness. Trained on 7 million direct measurements, the model improves precision by up to 40% compared to previous mappings. The tool helps estimate the potential sea-level rise from melting glaciers, which currently hold an estimated 150,000 cubic kilometers of ice.