STATES CHRONICLE – Scientists are now more attracted to the idea of becoming the first discoverers of dark matter and dark energy. However, there is another element of the cosmos with a more concrete structure of particles that seems to be overlooked. Its nickname is ‘the missing matter.’ Two teams of scientists have recently identified the first profs that attest the existence of such a mysterious substance.
The Missing Matter Is the One that Keeps Galaxies Together
Several reports indicated that the visible part of the universe consisting of galaxies and galaxy clusters are filling only 10% of baryon content. Therefore, it has been scientists’ priority quest to identify the matter that makes up the rest of 90%. Thanks to latest advancements in research methods, scientists succeeded to point out the missing matter of the universe.
This compound is made of particles that are known as baryons. Professionals believe this matter is the one that keeps galaxies together through filaments of hot gas. However, there was no proof to back up this theory until recently.
The two teams of researchers started off by taking hundreds of thousands of pictures of pairs of galaxies with the Planck satellite. Afterward, they organized the photos by scaling and rotating accordingly. In the end, they obtained a comprehensive view of the galaxies.
The next step was to obtain the ideal light to observe phenomena and analyze them. Therefore, they amplified the signals of the filaments until they became bright enough to watch them.
This is how scientists found that the universe contains ten times more baryons than humans previously estimated. Even though scientists couldn’t catch a clear glimpse of the filaments despite their advanced equipment, other revelations gave its presence away. They counted enough baryons to reveal the strings of gas that connect galaxies together.
“This goes a long way toward showing that many of our ideas of how galaxies form and how structures form over the history of the universe are pretty much correct.”
Researcher Ralph Kraft at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics commented this discovery as proof for what scientists have already deducted. However, there is still a lot of mysteries humans have to learn when it comes to the universe.
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