Supercomputers Pitch in to Search for Missing Matter

by Fraser Cain on December 6, 2007

Computer simulation of matter distribution. Image credit: CU-Boulder
I know, I know, you’re probably getting sick of hearing this. Astronomers have no idea what 95% of the Universe is; 70% is dark energy, and 25% is dark matter, leaving a mere 5% normal matter. But it gets worse. Astronomers can only actually account for about 60% of that regular matter (hydrogen, helium and heavier elements) – almost half of the regular matter is missing too!

I’ll repeat that, just so it’s clear. Of the 5% of the Universe that we can even understand, almost half of it is missing too.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have used a powerful supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputing Center to try and figure out where this missing mass could be hiding, and they think they’ve got a good place to look.

They built up a simulation of a huge chunk of Universe, 1.5 billion light-years on a side. Within this simulated Universe, they saw that much of the gas in the Universe forms into a tangled web of filaments that stretch for hundreds of million of light-years. In between these filaments are vast spherical voids without any matter.

The simulation works by modeling how material came together through gravity after the Big Bang. The simulation predicts that this missing material is hiding within gas clouds called the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium.

If their predictions are correct, the next generation of telescopes should be able to detect this missing mass in these hidden filaments. Some of these telescopes include the 10-metre South Pole Telescope in Antarctica and the 25-metre Cornell-Caltech Atacama Telescope (CCAT).

The South Pole Telescope will look at how the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is heated up as it passes through clouds of this gas. CCAT will be able to look back to periods just after the Big Bang, and see how the first large scale structures started to come together.

At least then, we’ll probably know where all that 5% of regular mass is. Dark matter and dark energy? Still a mystery.

Original Source: CU-Boulder News Release

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  • Henryarv

    I have sometimes wondered why water vapor in the sky gathers in formations called clouds instead of being more evenly distributed throughout the sky. Maybe the missing real matter is present in rather thin (dilute) invisible gas formations like clouds which do not emit any light or radiation that we can see. That is just a hypothesis; I don’t really know.

  • Henryarv

    Maybe these dilute gas clouds consist of cold helium in interstellar space, with all the cold atoms being in the ground state energetically. Helium is monoatomic and forms no bonds, and so atoms in the ground have practically no energy to emit any form of light or radiation. The helium gas would be so dilute that any absorption of light by the individual atoms in far-away outer space is not detected by any instruments on earth. Trying to excite these distant atoms from the earth would not result in any effect detectable on earth. The helium that has been detected in stars has been hot excited helium that could emit light when its excited electron(s) go to a lower energy state. Since helium forms no bonds, there are no vibrational energy levels to emit or absorb radiation. Since helium is monoatomic, transitions in rotational energy levels are negligible and undetectable.

  • phillipeb

    Perhaps we are just seeing heavier normal matter reacting quantumly. If quantum matter shifts between the implicate and explicate order (i.e. in and out of view) then perhaps these bits of normal matter are being forced to do the same based on interaction with surrounding phenomenon.

    I also quite like the idea of a reflective space. That the gaps in matter are nothing more than the reflective aspect of viewing a larger order of things. If something can be changed by simply looking at it then can it not be reasoned that something can be created because we are looking for it?

  • James M. Essig

    It is interesting to note that cosmologists believe that 70 percent of the mattergy of the universe is dark energy, 25 percent of the mattergy is dark matter, and only 5 percent of the mattergy is normal baryonic matter. I have often wondered if even within the known 4-D general relativistic space time contimuum, there might be some exotic form of mass that does not interact with the remaining portions of dark energy, dark matter, and baryonic matter even through the force of gravitation.

    This shadow matter would be bazaar indeed and might not even be expressible in the relativistic mass energy equivalence as E = M[C EXP 2]. Perhaps a “kilogram” of this matter would be much more energy dense than normal mass and could be used for utterly outstanding fuel to power a manned interstellar or intergalactic space craft if some way could be realized to permit the energy derivable from this would be exotic fuel to interact with the space craft and/or the surrounding interstellar medium.

    Note that the concept I am conjecturing about is not identical with that of socalled imaginary mass (in the imaginary or complex number sense) nor negative mass as distinct from antimatter which has the same inertial mass as normal matter, but rather something alltogether different. Nor am I proposing a form of normal mattergy occupying higher dimensional space such as the proposed higher dimensions of string theory, supersymmetry, or P-brane theory nor occupying parallel space time dimensions such as those conjectured about in the “Many Worlds Interpretation’ of quantum theory, but something even more bazaar: existent matter that interacts with normal matter and/or known or predicted yet to be discovered spacetime dimensionality through some completely unknown, yet to be discovered or yet to be mathematically formulated force(s).

    Perhaps such exotic mattergy would violate the thermodynamic principle of conservation of energy, but then again, it appears that the entire universe or what ever came before it (if the phrase came before it has any meaning) is the ultimate free lunch.

    That’s all for now.

    Jim

  • Burney

    The universe in my opinion is of a Klien bottle construction, this explains for expansion (as it is into itself) and the seemingly infinite nature of it. Viewed from a 3 dimensional point of view it is flat i.e the mobius strip and that explains the the universe is topologically flat nature that is present. On expansion and acceleration I agree with with the rotation explanation with it simply rotating into itself showing what to us looks like expansion and acceleration. Still unsure about the big bang though?

  • RUF

    Pi isn’t infinite when expessed as a fraction as well. Been awile since I was in a Math class, but I believe it was 11/3 or something like that.

  • Invisible Girl 0

    At least Astrofiend understood what concept I was getting at. It seems that ordinary mathmaticians are too caught up in arguing over small points to see that I was trying (in my own illiterate way) to express a CONCEPT that I have wondered about. I STILL wonder if unending numbers are responsible for life. Life reproduces by itself, a fact that I find remarkable to have evolved from inanimate matter. Perhaps one day a gifted biologist/mathmatician can get to looking at the concept without prejudice? I await that day with much interest. If something can be imagined, math can describe it (in my opinion). I even see human relationships as basically mathematical (would take too long to explain here). If the idea is wrong, then I’d like to see that proof also as I am a lifelong scientist and only seek the truth.

  • http://www.cosmologytrust.blogspot.com vidyardhi nanduri

    Sub. Undefined Concepts
    Astronomers have no idea what 95% of the Universe is; 70% is dark energy, and 25% is dark matter, leaving a mere 5% normal matter.
    A dogmatic Society in search of Dormant Energy.
    NAHI NAHI PASYATE DRUKKUM KARANE- COSMIC TUNE_UP SENSES
    Search :Cosmos Yoga Vision series-I to IV that covers the Centre of the Universe as well
    Vidyardhi Nanduri

  • Yor A. EdaIt

    Missing matter, dark matter, dark energy, extra dimensions, strings, unparticles, backward gravity, various types of “gravitrons”… what pure BS…gotta wonder what you guys were smokin’ in grad school.

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