‘Missing’ matter mystery solved
Astronomers using a powerful quasar to study an enormous invisible tendril full of superheated gas say they may have finally discovered the universe’s “missing” detectable matter.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, solve a decadesold mystery and could help scientists further probe the structure and evolution of the cosmos.
All of the atoms in the stars, galaxies and planets in existence make up roughly five per cent of the mass-energy density of the cosmos. The overwhelming majority, about 70 per cent, is made up of dark energy — a mysterious, repulsive force that is causing the universe to expand faster and faster. The remaining quarter or so is made up of dark matter — invisible, untouchable stuff whose presence can only be felt by its gravitational influence on galactic scales. Dark matter connects clusters of galaxies with massive tendrils, forming a cosmic web that serves as an unseen skeleton for the universe.
Scientists have estimated those shares largely using two different methods, said study co-author J. Michael Shull, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Many years ago, researchers calculated roughly how much matter would have formed in the wake of the “big bang” that gave birth to the universe.
Astronomers also studied the cosmic microwave background — the oldest light in the universe, which permeates the entire sky — and found roughly the same proportions of normal matter, dark matter and dark energy.
That small slice of normal matter that we can directly detect, which scientists call baryonic matter, is the most known quantity of the three: It emits light (like the sun) or reflects it (like the moon), making it visible to us or detectable by telescopes. And yet it also presents its own mystery, because for decades, scientists haven’t been able to find all of it.
“Over 20 years ago, people noted that if you added up all the starlight and all the mass in galaxies that goes with that starlight, you only get about 10 per cent of that five per cent of ordinary matter,” Shull said. “So there was a ‘missing matter’ problem going back over 20 years: where is the gas, where are the baryons, that aren’t collapsed into stars and galaxies?”
“That’s why we worried about it,” he added. “It really goes to the heart of key predictions in cosmology about the big bang.”
Researchers have slowly chipped away at that gap by adding to the census all the hot, diffuse gas in the enormous halos of galaxies and even larger galaxy clusters. But they wondered if even more of the missing matter might actually be suspended in the enormous filaments of dark matter that make up the cosmic web.
Here’s the problem with finding that missing matter: It would be mostly made out of hydrogen, the simplest element and by far the most abundant in the universe. When hydrogen atoms are ionized, they can become invisible to optical wavelengths, making them very difficult to detect.
Luckily, if a cloud of ionized hydrogen sits between Earth and a source of ultraviolet light, that hydrogen will absorb certain wavelengths, leaving a distinct chemical fingerprint that astronomers can detect.