Revealed: 40% of the Universe’s Missing Matter Found—The Simulations Were Spot On!

The universe is a fascinating place, but it’s surprising to learn that only about 5% of it is made up of ordinary matter like stars and planets. The rest? That’s a mystery involving dark matter and dark energy, which we still don’t fully understand. For a long time, scientists were puzzled. In fact, over a third of ordinary matter was unaccounted for.

New research has emerged to shed light on this mystery. Astronomers have started using Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) — short, intense bursts of radio waves — to probe the universe’s hidden matter. These bursts can pass through the intergalactic gas and have been instrumental in estimating how much matter lies between galaxies. Liam Connor, an assistant professor at Harvard, explains, “The FRBs shine through the fog of the intergalactic medium.” By analyzing how the signals spread out, scientists can “weigh” the gas even when it’s faint.

Interestingly, FRBs are relatively new to astronomy, having only been discovered about a decade ago. Some repeat, while others do not, and many remain unexplained. In a recent study, researchers analyzed 69 FRBs, including one from a staggering 9.1 billion light-years away.

This innovative approach complements previous methods. Notably, researchers used X-ray observations alongside FRBs to analyze the hot intergalactic gas. Observing this gas, known to reach millions of degrees, required two different telescopes: the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and the Japanese Suzaku. This collaboration allowed scientists to explore large structures like the Shapley Supercluster, the most massive known structure within one billion light-years of Earth, which contains over 8,000 galaxies.

Recent findings indicate that a filament of gas, potentially spanning 23 million light-years, contains a significant amount of the missing matter. Konstantinos Migkas from Leiden Observatory noted, “For the first time, our results closely match what we see in our leading model of the cosmos.” This connection could reshape our understanding of how galaxies are organized in the cosmic web, helping us understand their formation and future evolution.

What does this mean for science? Understanding where all the matter is helps us clarify the universe’s structure. Statistics from recent studies indicate that scientists have increasingly confirmed models suggesting a higher presence of matter in intergalactic space, meaning we are piecing together the cosmic puzzle faster than before.

If you want to dive deeper into these discoveries, check out the paper published in Nature Astronomy and the analysis from Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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