{"id":26626,"date":"2025-06-19T22:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T16:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=26626"},"modified":"2025-06-19T22:46:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T17:01:11","slug":"the-models-were-right-astronomers-find-missing-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/the-models-were-right-astronomers-find-missing-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe models were right\u201d: astronomers find \u2018missing\u2019 matter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Simulation of the cosmic web.\u00a0This image is from the Illustris Simulation of galaxy formation.\u00a0Credit: Illustris Collaboration \/ Illustris Simulation<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Astronomers have discovered a huge filament of hot gas bridging four galaxy clusters. At 10 times as massive as our galaxy, the thread could contain some of the universe\u2019s \u2018missing\u2019 matter, addressing a decades-long mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The astronomers used the European Space Agency\u2019s XMM-Newton and JAXA\u2019s Suzaku X-ray space telescopes to make the discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over one-third of the \u2018normal\u2019 matter in the local universe\u2014the visible stuff making up stars, planets, galaxies, and life\u2014is missing. It hasn\u2019t yet been seen, but it\u2019s needed to make our models of the cosmos work properly.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Said models suggest that this elusive matter might exist in long strings of gas, or filaments, bridging the densest pockets of space. While we\u2019ve spotted filaments before, it\u2019s tricky to make out their properties; they\u2019re typically faint, making it difficult to isolate their light from that of any galaxies, black holes, and other objects lying nearby. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

New research is now one of the first to do just this, finding and accurately characterizing a single filament of hot gas stretching between four clusters of galaxies in the nearby universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the first time, our results closely match what we see in our leading model of the cosmos\u2014something that\u2019s not happened before,\u201d says lead researcher Konstantinos Migkas of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. \u201cIt seems that the simulations were right all along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

XMM-Newton on the case<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clocking in at over 10 million degrees, the filament contains around 10 times the mass of the Milky Way and connects four galaxy clusters: two on one end, two on the other. All are part of the Shapley Supercluster, a collection of more than 8000 galaxies that forms one of the most massive structures in the nearby universe.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The filament stretches diagonally away from us through the supercluster for 23 million light-years, the equivalent of traversing the Milky Way end to end around 230 times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Konstantinos and colleagues characterised the filament by combining X-ray observations from XMM-Newton and Suzaku and digging into optical data from several others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two X-ray telescopes were ideal partners. Suzaku mapped the filament\u2019s faint X-ray light over a wide region of space, while XMM-Newton pinpointed very precisely contaminating sources of X-rays\u2014namely, supermassive black holes\u2014lying within the filament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThanks to XMM-Newton, we could identify and remove these cosmic contaminants, so we knew we were looking at the gas in the filament and nothing else,\u201d adds co-author Florian Pacaud of the University of Bonn, Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur approach was really successful and reveals that the filament is exactly as we\u2019d expect from our best large-scale simulations of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not truly missing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as revealing a huge and previously unseen thread of matter running through the nearby cosmos, the finding shows how some of the densest and most extreme structures in the universe\u2014galaxy clusters\u2014are connected over colossal distances.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also sheds light on the very nature of the \u2018cosmic web,\u2019 the vast, invisible cobweb of filaments that underpins the structure of everything we see around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis research is a great example of collaboration between telescopes and creates a new benchmark for how to spot the light coming from the faint filaments of the cosmic web,\u201d adds Norbert Schartel, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMore fundamentally, it reinforces our standard model of the cosmos and validates decades of simulations: it seems that the \u2018missing\u2019 matter may truly be lurking in hard-to-see threads woven across the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piecing together an accurate picture of the cosmic web is the domain of ESA\u2019s Euclid mission. Launched in 2023, Euclid is exploring this web\u2019s structure and history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission is also digging deep into the nature of dark matter and energy, neither of which has ever been observed, despite accounting for a whopping 95% of the universe, and working with other dark universe detectives to solve some of the biggest and longest-standing cosmic mysteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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