Part of the universe's missing matter found:
Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Via the MUSE instrument from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, has mapped a galactic wind for the first time. This unique observation, which is detailed in a study published in MNRAS on 16 September 2021, helped to reveal where some of the universe's missing matter is located and to observe the formation of a nebula around a galaxy.
[...] The perfect positioning of the galaxy and the quasar, as well as the discovery of gas exchange due to galactic winds, made it possible to draw up a unique map. This enabled the first observation of a nebula in formation that is simultaneously emitting and absorbing magnesium—some of the universe's missing baryons—with the Gal1 galaxy.
This type of normal matter nebula is known in the near universe, but their existence for young galaxies in formation had only been supposed.
Scientists thus discovered some of the universe's missing baryons, thereby confirming that 80–90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies, an observation that will help expand models for the evolution of galaxies.
Journal Reference:
Johannes Zabl, Nicolas F. Bouché, Lutz Wisotzki, et al. MusE GAs FLOw and Wind (MEGAFLOW) VIII. Discovery of a Mgii emission halo probed by a quasar sightline, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab2165)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @05:28AM (1 child)
It's an intergalactic pedophiles all the way down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @05:36AM
Don't travel there, you'll bump into one, ass first.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday September 20 2021, @07:39AM (7 children)
The whole kludge of "dark matter" - stuff that we can't see or detect that nonetheless has gravity - never made sense to me. Maybe discoveries like this are the beginnings of the real answer: ordinary matter and energy, just in ways and places we hadn't yet identified it. If "80–90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies", that's a lot. Now just to explain why galaxies seem to have more gravitation than their apparently matter can account for. Which could be a lot of things: black holes, but probably not leprechauns or dark matter.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 20 2021, @08:11AM
> probably not leprechauns or dark matter.
Well, dark matter is just matter that we can't see, hence "dark". Nothing in the rule book that says it can't be baryonic, although it is unexpected.
ps: arxiv:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.14090.pdf [arxiv.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday September 20 2021, @11:43AM
The just discovered one does not answer to the dark matter, it answers to the missing baryonic matter [wikipedia.org].
The "dark matter" (or any other theory) is still needed to explain the anomalies in the rotation speed of the galaxies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday September 20 2021, @01:43PM
And don't forget sofas. You wouldn't believe how much stuff that you thought was missing has just fallen down behind the sofa.
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Monday September 20 2021, @02:09PM
No. The "missing matter" is baryonic in nature. "Dark matter" is non-baryonic, and nobody knows what it is. This is baryonic matter, and thus part of the "missing matter" (though now that it's been found, perhaps it needs to be reclassified). It has nothing to do with "dark matter", which may not be material at all. All we really know about it is its gravitational effects (i.e. where there are signs of it). Perhaps we need to rewrite the laws of gravity to account for it.
OTOH, I said that a lot more authoritatively than I've got any right to. The baryonic "missing matter" was used to account for the rate of nucleosynthesis, especially the Lithium balance, in the early universe. But it seems as if there are questions about the accuracy of the theories used, so this is really a lot less certain than I presented it. Specialist are arguing about things that I thought had been settled.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 20 2021, @02:13PM
The thing is until we have viable models which can extend from our present knowledge of physics to this phenomenon, everything is a kludge - dark matter & energy, MOND, QI, string theory, quantum gravity, whatever.
Also, black holes in the right place (in the galactic halo) are part of a dark matter possibility called MACHOs [wikipedia.org] (massive compact halo object).
(Score: 2) by aliks on Monday September 20 2021, @10:16PM (1 child)
I don't understand it, therefore noone can understand it?
To err is human, to comment divine
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @05:32PM
I don't understand that, I don't believe that = the intellectual tools of the university professor
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @09:36AM (1 child)
What's next, some scientist finding that climate change is also caused by baryons? That has negative implications for Al Gore's carbon credit business.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday September 20 2021, @05:30PM
Sure, more exactly objects consisting of three clumps of baryons, one having baryon number 12 and two having baryon number 16, surrounded and held together by a cloud of charged fermions. Or, as we more commonly call them, carbon dioxide molecules.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Monday September 20 2021, @04:10PM
That's not dark matter, that's yo momma!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @04:22PM
...oh. TFA and TFPP has them. move along.