this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago

"The FRBs (fast radio bursts) 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,"

The results revealed that 76 percent of the universe's normal matter lies in the space between galaxies, also known as the intergalactic medium. About 15 percent resides in galaxy halos, and the remainder is concentrated within galaxies—in stars or in cold galactic gas. This distribution lines up with predictions from advanced cosmological simulations but has never been observationally confirmed until now.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

"It's always in the last place you look."

Obviously. If you find it and keep looking, that's just weird. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

nha, I keep looking just in case

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Eventually, I will find the keys to my lambo.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

They should just have thought about what they were doing last time they had the matter and worked forward.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Does this mean we finally know what dark matter is? Or at least what parts of it are?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

No, this study didn't deal with dark matter, that's not the missing matter they're taking about. They've known that the ordinary matter in the galaxies only accounts for a small fraction of the matter in the universe, and there were theories about how much matter was in the space between galaxies. This study looked at radio waves being emitted by distant sources, and looked at how much those waves were defracted by pasted through matter, which corroborated that yes, there's a lot of matter between galaxies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So the stuff that was corroborated in this study was part of the fraction of matter we already had an explanation for, right?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, it validated the theory.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My understanding is that we still don't know what it IS, but we now have corroboration that it EXISTS and roughly what it WEIGHS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yes thats also my layman understanding

[–] alphacyberranger 5 points 2 weeks ago

Ah there it is, I forgot where I left it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

They found the answer to a long standing question in astronomy.

And it's mundane?

I'm not accustomed to mundane answers here.