Astronomers Pin Down Universe's Missing Matter in Cosmic Web
INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM, JUN 19 – Fast radio bursts reveal that about 76% of the universe's ordinary matter is in the intergalactic medium, confirming long-standing cosmological models, researchers said.
- On June 16, researchers from the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Smithsonian, together with scientists from Caltech, published a study in Nature Astronomy that identified the location of the universe's missing ordinary matter.
- This study utilized fast radio bursts to address the longstanding issue of missing baryonic matter, clarifying that the challenge was not about the existence of this matter but rather identifying its location.
- The team analyzed 60 FRBs ranging from 11.74 million to 9.1 billion light-years and found that about 76% of baryonic matter lies in the intergalactic medium, 15% in halo gas, and 9% in galaxies.
- Liam Connor explained that fast radio bursts pass through the diffuse matter between galaxies, and by accurately analyzing the delay in their signals, scientists can determine the amount of this otherwise invisible material.
- This research confirms theoretical predictions with direct evidence and enables future detailed mapping of cosmic matter distribution using next-generation radio telescopes.
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78 Articles
Hot gas filament spanning galaxy clusters may resolve missing matter puzzle
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jun 23, 2025 A European-led team of astronomers has identified a colossal, high-temperature filament of gas stretching across 23 million light-years and connecting four galaxy clusters. The discovery sheds light on the elusive warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), a form of matter suspected to contain a significant portion of the universe's missing normal matter. Utilizing the Japanese Suzaku and Europ
In a discovery that ends a decades-old astronomical mystery, scientists have pinpointed the location of “missing” ordinary matter in the universe. The new study, conducted by scientists from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics and the California Institute of Technology, and published in the journal Nature Astronomy, reveals that more than 76% of this matter is found in the thin, intergalactic gas between galaxies, known as the “intergalactic med…
One third of the "normal matter", which also consists of planets and humans, escaped any observation until the end. Now astronomers have identified them using two X-ray telescopes in a structure of hot gas.
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