Astronomers believe that they have come close to uncovering a long-standing riddle related to the structure of our Universe, which consists in the fact that the Universe lacks about one third of the mass of matter.
This missing matter is by no means dark matter (a completely different mystery of the Universe) —no, it is a normal matter that researchers simply cannot detect. However, in the new scientific work, a method was proposed that allows to attack the trail of this elusive matter.
In this study, headed by Orsolya Kovács, a doctoral student at Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center, USA, tested one popular hypothesis, according to which the hidden mass of the Universe is concentrated in long and thin strands of warm gas that fill an intergalactic space. Usually, these filaments are quite difficult to detect, since telescopes operating in the optical range cannot detect the presence of these structures.
Therefore, to detect these filaments, the Covax team used a new method based on an analysis of the results of observations in the X-ray range, carried out using the NASA Chandra space observatory (Chandra). Researchers observed with the help of Chandra a quasar called H1821 + 643, emitting powerful X-ray fluxes, which undergo certain changes when passing warm gas through the filaments.
Using this method allowed researchers to detect 17 different filaments. Then, as part of this work, we calculated the mass of these gas filaments. The results showed that in the investigated corner of the Universe all the missing mass is hidden inside the filaments.
The missing matter of the universe
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