Scientist Locate Universe's Missing Baryonic Matter

  In a new study led by an international team of researchers, scientists have discovered the location of the missing one-third of baryonic matter which makes up of all physical matter in the universe. Up until now, astrophysicists have been able to locate only about two-thirds of the matter that was theorized to have been created during the Big Bang.
 Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton), the scientists tracked down radiation emanating from distant, ultra-bright black holes called quasars. It was found that this lost matter existed as filaments of oxygen gas at temperatures close to 1 million degrees Celsius, lying in the space between galaxies.
  “This is one of the key pillars of testing the Big Bang theory: figuring out the baryon census of hydrogen and helium and everything else in the periodic table,” said Michael Shull from the University of Colorado Boulder, a co-author of the study. “This is where nature has become very perverse. This intergalactic medium contains filaments of gas at temperatures from a few thousand degrees to a few million degrees.”

Read more about this fascinating story at: https://www.colorado.edu/today/2018/06/20/missing-baryons

Image Credit: Illustris Collaboration