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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
What Astronomers Just Discovered Between Galaxies Changes Everything
For decades, scientists have known that a massive chunk of the universe's ordinary matter was missing. Not dark matter, the elusive substance that doesn't interact with light, but regular, everyday matter made of atoms. And now, thanks to a brilliant use of cosmic radio signals, that mystery may finally be solved. In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, astronomers used fast radio bursts (FRBs)—brief, millisecond-long blasts of energy from deep space—to detect where all that missing matter was hiding: in the vast stretches between galaxies, known as the intergalactic medium. These FRBs are powerful. Though short-lived, they emit as much energy in one burst as the sun does in 30 years. When they pass through space, they act like cosmic flashlights, lighting up the otherwise invisible gas that floats between galaxies. The team measured how the light from 69 FRBs slowed as it moved through this matter, allowing them to "weigh" the fog they passed through. "It's like we're seeing the shadow of all the baryons," explained Caltech assistant professor Vikram Ravi, using the scientific term for this ordinary matter. "With FRBs as the backlight, we now know roughly where the rest of the matter in the universe is hiding." The results show about 76 percent of the universe's baryonic matter exists in this intergalactic fog. Meanwhile, 15 percent of the baryonic matter surrounds galaxies in halos and just 9 percent resides inside the galaxies themselves. This breakthrough was made possible by telescopes like Caltech's Deep Synoptic Array and Australia's Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, which helped localize the FRBs' origins. Caltech's upcoming DSA-2000 radio telescope, set to detect 10,000 FRBs per year, could be the key to even deeper cosmological insights. For astronomers, it's a milestone moment—one that brings us closer to understanding not just where we come from, but how the universe is truly structured. What Astronomers Just Discovered Between Galaxies Changes Everything first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 17, 2025
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Mysterious deep-space radio signals reveal location of the universe's 'missing matter'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Roughly half of all the regular matter in the universe has been unaccounted for — until now. In a new study, researchers claim that, using short, extragalactic flashes called fast radio bursts (FRBs), they have accounted for all the baryonic matter — the "normal" matter that makes up stars, planets, and other objects that interact with light — that we expect to find in the universe. Much of the "missing" matter is spread thinly through the space between galaxies, according to the study, which was published June 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy. Baryonic matter, which is composed of particles like protons and neutrons, makes up just 5% of the universe. Another 27% is invisible dark matter, and the rest is mysterious dark energy that drives the universe's accelerating expansion. But scientists have been able to observe only about half as much baryonic matter as they expect to have been produced during the Big Bang. To account for the remaining matter, the researchers looked to 69 FRBs to light up the intergalactic space that lies between the bursts and Earth. No one knows what causes FRBs, but most of the powerful, millisecond-long radio flashes originate outside the Milky Way. "The 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's too faint to see," study co-author Liam Connor, an astronomer at Harvard University, said in a statement. Related: Earth's upper atmosphere could hold a missing piece of the universe, new study hints Using this technique, Connor and his colleagues found that about 76% of regular matter in the universe lies in the intergalactic medium, the hot gas that fills the space between galaxies. Another 15% or so can be found in galaxy halos — the hot, spherical regions at the edges of galaxies. The remaining baryonic matter makes up the stars, planets and cold gases inside galaxies themselves, the team proposed. "It's like we're seeing the shadow of all the baryons, with FRBs as the backlight," study co-author Vikram Ravi, an astronomer at Caltech, said in the statement. "If you see a person in front of you, you can find out a lot about them. But if you just see their shadow, you still know that they're there and roughly how big they are." The findings observationally account for all baryonic matter in the universe for the first time, pinpointing not just whether this matter exists but also where it is concentrated in the universe. RELATED STORIES —Where do fast radio bursts come from? Astronomers tie mysterious eruptions to massive galaxies. —Fast radio burst traced to the outskirts of an ancient 'graveyard' galaxy — and the cause remains a mystery —Ghostly galaxy without dark matter baffles astronomers "I would say that the missing baryons problem is essentially solved," Nicolás Tejos, an astronomer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso who was not involved in the study, told Science magazine. "Thanks to FRBs, we have now been able to close this baryon budget." In future studies, the team hopes to leverage the Deep Synoptic Array-2000, a proposed network of 2,000 radio telescopes that will scan the entire sky over five years, to pinpoint up to 10,000 new FRBs per year and investigate the universe's baryonic matter in even more detail.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists find universe's missing matter while watching fast radio bursts shine through 'cosmic fog'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Half of the universe's ordinary matter was missing — until now. Astronomers have used mysterious but powerful explosions of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) to detect the universe's missing "normal" matter for the first time. This previously missing stuff isn't dark matter, the mysterious substance that accounts for around 85% of the material universe but remains invisible because it doesn't interact with light. Instead, it is ordinary matter made out of atoms (composed of baryons) that does interact with light but has until now just been too dark to see. Though this puzzle might not quite get as much attention as the dark matter conundrum — at least we knew what this missing matter is, while the nature of dark matter is unknown — but its AWOL status has been a frustrating problem in cosmology nonetheless. The missing baryonic matter problem has persisted because it is spread incredibly thinly through halos that surround galaxies and in diffuse clouds that drift in the space between galaxies. Now, a team of astronomers discovered and accounted for this missing everyday matter by using FRBs to illuminate wispy structures lying between us and the distant sources of these brief but powerful bursts of radio waves. "The 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's too faint to see," study team leader Liam Connor, a researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), said in a statement. FRBs are pulses of radio waves that often last for mere milliseconds, but in this brief time they can emit as much energy as the sun radiates in 30 years. Their origins remain something of a mystery. That's because the short duration of these flashes and the fact that most occur only once make them notoriously hard to trace back to their source. Yet for some time, their potential to help "weigh" the matter between galaxies has been evident to astronomers. Though thousands of FRBs have been discovered, not all were suitable for this purpose. That's because, to act as a gauge of the matter between the FRB and Earth, the energy burst has to have a localized point of origin with a known distance from our planet. Thus far, astronomers have only managed to perform this localization for about 100 FRBs. Connor and colleagues, including California Institute of Technology (Caltech) assistant professor Vikram Ravi, utilized 69 FRBs from sources at distances of between 11.7 million to about 9.1 billion light-years away. The FRB from this maximum distance, FRB 20230521B, is the most distant FRB source ever discovered. Of the 69 FRBs used by the team, 39 were discovered by a network of 110 radio telescopes located at Caltech's Owen Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) called the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA). The DSA was built with the specific mission of spotting and localizing FRBs to their home galaxies. Once this had been done, instruments at Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory and at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego were used the measure the distance between Earth and these FRB-source galaxies. Many of the remaining FRBs were discovered by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a network of radio telescopes in Western Australia that has excelled in the detection and localization of FRBs since it began operations. As FRBs pass through matter, the light that comprises them is split into different wavelengths. This is just like what happens when sunlight passes through a prism and creates a rainbow diffraction pattern. The angle of the separation of these different wavelengths can be used to determine how much matter lies in the clouds or structures that the FRBs pass through. "It's like we're seeing the shadow of all the baryons, with FRBs as the backlight," Ravi explained. "If you see a person in front of you, you can find out a lot about them. But if you just see their shadow, you still know that they're there and roughly how big they are." The team's results allowed them to determine that approximately 76% of the universe's normal matter lurks in the space between galaxies, known as the intergalactic medium. They found a further 15% is locked up in the vast diffuse haloes around galaxies. The remaining 9% seems to be concentrated within the galaxies, taking the form of stars and cold galactic gas. The distribution calculated by the team is in agreement with predictions delivered by advanced simulations of the universe and its evolution, but it represents the first observational evidence of this. Related Stories: — What are fast radio bursts? — Mysterious fast radio burst traced back to massive 'cosmic graveyard' of ancient stars — Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars The team's results could lead to a better understanding of how galaxies grow. For Ravi, however, this is just the first step toward FRBs becoming a vital tool in cosmology, aiding our understanding of the universe. The next step in this development may well be Caltech's planned radio telescope, DSA-2000. This radio array, set to be constructed in the Nevada desert, could spot and localize as many as 10,000 FRBs every year. This should both boost our understanding of these powerful blasts of radio waves and increase their usefulness as probes of the universe's baryonic matter content. The team's research was published on Monday (June 16) in the journal Nature Astronomy.
RNZ News
5 days ago
- Science
- RNZ News
Mysterious fast radio bursts help astronomers pinpoint cosmic 'missing' matter
By Ashley Strickland, CNN An artist's depiction shows how brief, bright bursts of radio waves travel through the fog between galaxies, known as the intergalactic medium. Each wavelength allows astronomers to "weigh" the otherwise invisible ordinary matter. Photo: Melissa Weiss / CfA via CNN Newsource Astronomers have used mysterious fast radio bursts, or millisecond-long bright flashes of radio waves from space, to help them track down some of the missing matter in the universe. Dark matter and dark energy make up most of the universe. Dark matter is an enigmatic substance that shapes the cosmos, while dark energy is a force that accelerates the expansion rate of the universe, according to NASA. Both are impossible to directly observe but can be detected due to their gravitational effects. But the rest of the universe is made of cosmic baryons, or ordinary matter, which can be found in tiny particles called protons and neutrons. "If you add up all the stars and planets and cold gas that you see with your telescopes, it only amounts to less than 10 percent of ordinary matter in the universe," said Liam Connor, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University. While astronomers thought most of the universe's ordinary matter was floating in the spaces between galaxies, called the intergalactic medium, or within the extended halos of galaxies - vast, spherical regions including stars and hot gas - they couldn't measure this foglike matter. That's because ordinary matter emits light at different wavelengths, but much of it is so diffuse that it's like trying to spot fog, astronomers say. The inability to detect roughly half of the cosmos' ordinary matter led to a decades-long cosmology struggle called the missing baryon problem. Now, Connor and his colleagues have directly observed the missing matter by using the flashing of fast radio bursts to essentially map out what couldn't be seen before. They reported their findings in a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. "The 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's too faint to see," Connor, the paper's lead author, said. Much of the work for the study took place while Connor was a research assistant at the California Institute of Technology. Down the road, astronomers believe they can use fast radio bursts to help illuminate the otherwise invisible structure of the universe. An artist's illustration depicts ordinary matter as pops of color in the spaces between galaxies. Photo: Jack Madden / IllustrisTNG / Ralf Konietzka / Liam Connor / CfA via CNN Newsource More than a thousand fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have been detected since their discovery in 2007. Only about 100 have been traced back to galaxies, according to the study authors. Astronomers are still unsure of the exact causes behind the bursts, but finding more of them could reveal their murky origins. To illuminate the missing matter, the new analysis relied on a mixture of previously observed fast radio bursts, as well as bright flashes that had never been observed until the research was underway. The 69 fast radio bursts examined in the study exist at distances ranging from 11.74 million to nearly 9.1 billion light-years from Earth. The farthest, named FRB 20230521B, was discovered during the research and is the current record holder for the most distant fast radio burst ever observed. The study team used the Deep Synoptic Array, a network of 110 radio telescopes, to find and identify 39 of the fast radio bursts in the study. The telescope array, designed to trace fast radio bursts back to their origin points, is located near Bishop, California, at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory. The W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and Palomar Observatory near San Diego helped measure the distances between the fast radio bursts and Earth. And the other 30 fast radio bursts were found by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and other telescopes around the world. The Deep Synoptic Array helped astronomers find previously unknown fast radio bursts. Photo: Vikram Ravi / Caltech / OVRO via CNN Newsource When radio waves travel as fast radio bursts toward Earth, their light can be measured in different wavelengths that spread out. How much the light spreads out is dependent on how much matter is in its path. The team was able to measure how much each fast radio burst signal slowed down as it passed through space before reaching Earth, illuminating the gas it encountered along the way. The speed of fast radio bursts can be affected by what they travel through, meaning different wavelengths of light arrive at different times. While long, red wavelengths travel more slowly to reach Earth, shorter, bluer wavelengths arrive more quickly. Each wavelength allowed astronomers to measure the invisible matter. The short pulses of fast radio bursts are crucial for this measurement because they act like flashing cosmic beacons, Connor said. "We can measure very precisely how much the radio pulse is slowed down at different wavelengths (it's called plasma dispersion), and this effectively counts up all the baryons," Connor said. "For a star that shines continuously or a source that is not in the radio, we can not measure this 'dispersion' effect. It must be impulsive, short, and at radio wavelengths." The team was able to use the dispersion of light to map and measure matter along the pathway of the fast radio bursts. "It's like we're seeing the shadow of all the baryons, with FRBs as the backlight," said study coauthor Vikram Ravi, an assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech, in a statement. "If you see a person in front of you, you can find out a lot about them. But if you just see their shadow, you still know that they're there and roughly how big they are." After mapping out all the fast radio bursts and the matter they passed through and illuminated, the team determined that 76 percent of cosmic matter exists as hot, low-density gas in the space between galaxies. Another 15 percent can be found in galactic halos, while the remainder is located within galaxies themselves as stars, planets or cold gas. The observation-based findings align with prior predictions made using simulations, according to the study authors. William H Kinney, professor of physics at the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, agreed. "So the upshot is that they came up with a new way of finding the baryons we knew had to be there, but whether they were really in the (intergalactic medium) instead of in halos was still something of an open question," said Kinney, who was not involved in the research. "The decades-old 'missing baryon problem' was never about whether the matter existed," Connor said. "It was always: Where is it? Now, thanks to FRBs, we know: Three-quarters of it is floating between galaxies in the cosmic web." Understanding the distribution of ordinary matter can help researchers understand how galaxies grow and evolve. "Baryons are pulled into galaxies by gravity, but supermassive black holes and exploding stars can blow them back out - like a cosmic thermostat cooling things down if the temperature gets too high," Connor said. "Our results show this feedback must be efficient, blasting gas out of galaxies and into the (intergalactic medium)." Fast radio bursts also may be able to help map the cosmic web in detail, Ravi said. This structure, largely made of dark matter, serves as the backbone of the universe, according to NASA. Caltech is currently planning to build another radio telescope in the Nevada desert, which could build upon the findings from the new study by finding and tracing up to 10,000 fast radio bursts per year, Connor said. "It's a triumph of modern astronomy," Ravi said."We're beginning to see the Universe's structure and composition in a whole new light, thanks to FRBs. These brief flashes allow us to trace the otherwise invisible matter that fills the vast spaces between galaxies." - CNN
