The European project led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is featured on the cover of issue 327, the September 2026 edition of Astronomía magazine, with an extensive feature exploring the search for answers about the dark universe.
We’re on the cover! And for UNDARK, this is a wonderful opportunity to bring some of the most fascinating questions in science today beyond laboratories and observatories and closer to society.
Under the title “Shedding Light on the Dark Cosmos,” Astronomía dedicates its cover and an extensive eight-page feature to UNDARK (Unravelling the Dark Universe from the Canary Islands Observatories), the project coordinated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), which brings together particle physics, cosmology and astrophysics to better understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy. The magazine itself presents the UNDARK feature as the main article of its September issue.
The article is built around an in-depth conversation with Jorge Martín Camalich, Principal Investigator of UNDARK, exploring one of the great unknown territories of contemporary physics: we know dark matter is there because of its gravitational effects, yet we still do not know its true nature.
The story is told through the perspective of Thomas Villa, a science and cultural journalist with an international career, who works between Italy and Spain and contributes to leading publications including Astronomy Magazine, Astronomía, Muy Interesante, Focus and Artribune. His work brings together science and culture, making complex subjects accessible to broad audiences without sacrificing scientific rigour. Villa also has extensive experience communicating astrophysics projects and major scientific infrastructures. On this occasion, his work finds in Astronomía an ideal platform for bringing UNDARK’s research closer to society.
From the Canary Islands to the Dark Universe
Throughout the feature, Villa explores some of the leading dark matter candidates and search strategies, from WIMPs and axions to ultralight dark matter, showing how the Canary Islands Observatories provide an exceptional environment in which to approach these questions from very different perspectives.
Instruments and experiments such as MAGIC, CTAO, ASTRI and QUIJOTE, together with studies of the structure and dynamics of galaxies, are among the research areas that UNDARK aims to connect with fundamental physics. The project also seeks to build bridges between scientific communities that have traditionally worked with different tools and languages.
As Martín Camalich explains in the interview, UNDARK aims to act as a kind of “translator between fields,” bringing together particle physicists, cosmologists, theorists and observational astrophysicists to examine the same fundamental questions from complementary perspectives.
Science Is Also About Learning to Live With What We Still Don’t Know
But the article goes beyond experiments and theories. It also addresses something deeply human: our relationship with the unknown.
Dark matter is a remarkable example of how science works. We have strong evidence for its existence, we build hypotheses, develop new instruments and search for new ways to observe it, but we still do not have the definitive answer.
The feature concludes precisely with this idea: doing science also means developing better questions, better instruments and stronger bridges between disciplines, gradually expanding the map of what we know.
Having this story now featured on the cover of Astronomía is an opportunity to bring UNDARK’s work, and the research being carried out from the Canary Islands, to new audiences.
Because the Universe still holds enormous mysteries, and at UNDARK we continue trying to shed light on them.
