European space telescope makes missing matter find

by Rich Bowden - May 7 2008, 22:13

The European Space Agency's (ESA) orbiting telescope has successfully managed to spot hot gas between two clusters of galaxies, confirming the previously only theorised existence of some of the universe's "missing matter".

Using the ESA's orbiting X-ray space observatory XMM-Newton, astronomers have uncovered a hot bridge of gas between the galactic clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223, so-called baryonic matter, which astrophysicists believe makes up less than five percent of the cosmos.

"The hot gas that we see in this bridge or filament is probably the hottest and densest part of the diffuse gas in the cosmic web, believed to constitute about half the baryonic matter in the universe," says Norbert Werner from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, leader of the team reporting the discovery.

The majority of the universe is made up of energy and matter known as "dark" with only around 4.6 percent baryonic matter, which is made up of particles like protons or neutrons and interacts with light. $The ESA space telescope has found evidence of the universe\'s$

The ESA space telescope has found evidence of the universe\'s "missing matter". Photo: Model of the XMM-Newton from Cité de l\'Espace in Toulouse. Credit: Poppy/Wikipedia

This forms most of the visible universe such as galaxies, stars and gases however scientists believe they have only been able to observe half of the expected baryonic matter.

The discovery is an important step for astronomers as they attempt to understand the structure and content of the universe.

"This is only the beginning. To understand the distribution of the matter within the cosmic web, we have to see more systems like this one. And ultimately launch a dedicated space observatory to observe the cosmic web with a much higher sensitivity than possible with current missions. Our result allows to set up reliable requirements for those new missions." said Norbert Werner.

"So far we could only see the clusters, the dense knots of the web. Now we are starting to see the connecting wires of the immense cosmic spider web," said Max Planck Institute astrophysicist Aurora Simionescu, co-author of a paper presenting the findings in the May issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.

Talkback

There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment!

Science: Index; Features

: News

Advertising

Latest

3G expectation builds as Apple Stores run out of iPhones
BlackBerry handsets to embrace Windows Live
Cisco boosts boardroom communication with TelePresence
New energy-efficient Opterons rolled out by AMD
AMD and HP reportedly responsible for XP SP3 glitches

Advertising

Science

European space telescope makes missing matter find

Talkback

Latest

In The Tech Herald

Site

The Fine Print