{"id":193508,"date":"2025-06-18T04:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T04:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/193508\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T04:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T04:46:09","slug":"astronomers-just-found-the-universes-missing-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/193508\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers just found the universe’s ‘missing matter’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a lot of discussion over the years about what the universe is made up of. While some argue that dark matter is holding it together, while others argue dark matter doesn\u2019t exist<\/a>, despite us possibly detecting dark matter<\/a> a time or two. What is more intriguing, though, is that astronomers believe the universe is missing matter, and now they say they\u2019ve found evidence of it.<\/p>\n

The case of the \u2018missing matter\u2019<\/p>\n

This matter was considered \u201cmissing\u201d because of how thinly it was spread among the various galaxies and halos of the universe. Because it is so diffuse, it\u2019s exceptionally hard to account for. But in a new study published in Nature Astronomy<\/a>, astronomers from Caltech and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) say they have detected the matter.<\/p>\n

\"JamesM74 shines at its brightest in this combined optical\/mid-infrared image, featuring data from both the NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA\/ESA\/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Image source: ESA\/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team; ESA\/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt<\/p>\n

Additionally, they say that they\u2019ve thoroughly accounted for all the universe\u2019s missing matter. According to a statement shared by Caltech<\/a>, the researchers relied on fast radio bursts (FRBs) to help illuminate the matter that lies between those distant FRBs and us here on Earth.<\/p>\n

How they did it<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FRBs shine through the fog of the intergalactic medium, and by precisely measuring how the light slows down, we can weigh that fog, even when it\u2019s too faint to see,\u201d Liam Connor, an assistant professor at Harvard and lead author on the new study explained. In total, the team looked at 69 FRBs, ranging in distance from around 11.74 million to 9.1 billion light-years away from us. FRB 20230521B, which is located 9.1 billion light-years away, is now the most distant FRB ever recorded.<\/p>\n

\tTech. Entertainment. Science. Your inbox.\t<\/p>\n

Sign up for the most interesting tech & entertainment news out there.<\/p>\n

By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use<\/a> and have reviewed the Privacy Notice.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite having detected more than a thousand FRBs, we\u2019ve only managed to pinpoint around one hundred or so to their specific host galaxies. Other attempts to detect the missing matter had only hinted at its existence hiding among the holes and halos of the universe. However, by relying on the FRBs, the researchers were able to find evidence of the matter.<\/p>\n

These findings will help us better understand the universe and how galaxies grow. They could also help us unravel some of the greatest mysteries of the early universe,<\/a> including how the universe expanded has expanded so quickly since the Big Bang. And researchers say this is just the beginning of the use of FRBs in cosmology. A future radio telescope from Caltech will help find and localize up to 10,000 FRBs per year, which should dramatically enhance our understanding of these distant radio bursts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s been a lot of discussion over the years about what the universe is made up of. While…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[2343,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-193508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-research","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114702554513140550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}