Astronomers may have finally found the "missing matter"

[SPCTRE]

New fast radio burst discovery finds 'missing matter' in the universe

An international team of scientists using a combination of radio and optical telescopes has for the first time managed to identify the location of a fast radio burst, allowing them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.

FRBs show a frequency-dependent dispersion, a delay in the radio signal caused by how much material it has gone through. "Until now, the dispersion measure is all we had. By also having a distance we can now measure how dense the material is between the point of origin and Earth, and compare that with the current model of the distribution of matter in the universe" explains Dr Simon Johnston, co-author of the study, from CSIRO's Astronomy and Space Science division. "Essentially this lets us weigh the universe, or at least the normal matter it contains."

In the current model, the universe is believed to be made of 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter and 5% 'ordinary' matter, the matter that makes everything we see. However, through observations of stars, galaxies and hydrogen, astronomers have only been able to account for about half of the ordinary matter, the rest could not be seen directly and so has been referred to as 'missing'.

"The good news is our observations and the model match, we have found the missing matter" explained Dr Keane. "It's the first time a fast radio burst has been used to conduct a cosmological measurement."

It's kinda mindboggling that it was possible to detect a ~1 millisecond event (only 16 of which had ever been recorded), let alone coordinate on a global scale to gather and consolidate measurements. Pretty cool stuff.

 

[Santaman]

Quite useful.. now if Science also would find out where all those socks have gone that disappear in the laundry...