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Even with the new evidence, they plan to keep looking, said Nicastro. That's because intergalactic baryons not only fill a gap in scientists' understanding of the universe, but they may also lead to a better understanding of "dark matter," a mysterious and unseen form of matter that has so far only been detected by the gravitational pull it exerts on other bodies in the universe.

They just found Baryons, the building blocks of life. Oxygen Ions + Carbon + Nitrogen etc... They have yet to find dark matter. But that's some pretty good info. (Y)

Wow, thats amazing.  So, what's dark matter?

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Dark Matter

n : (cosmology) a hypothetical form of matter that is believed to make up 90 percent of the matter in the universe; it is invisible (does not absorb or emit light) and does not collide with atomic particles but exerts gravitational force

Dark Matter

n : (cosmology) a hypothetical form of matter that is believed to make up 90 percent of the matter in the universe; it is invisible (does not absorb or emit light) and does not collide with atomic particles but exerts gravitational force

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90%?

why is it so hard to find?

"Whereas baryons account for 4 percent of the total matter and energy in the universe, dark matter is thought to make up 23 percent."

So yeah, they maybe found some dark matter, if that was actually part of the dark matter, but even then, there's undiscovered dark matter? :huh:

As for dark energy, I'd say it's a name given for a force we don't understand. It could be that there isn't any dark energy at all, but our theories are wrong. Same with dark matter btw. We haven't observed it for sure yet, we just assume dark matter is going to be there. With other theories, I guess you could find workaround without the necessity of dark matter to exist? It could be that we simply don't understand gravitational forces and therefore assume there must be tons of strange "dark matter" around us when it's in reality us who're wrong. :)

In layman's terms: Dark matter, which makes up a huge chunk of the universe (up to 90%), is the theoretical "filler" to make everything else we have discovered about the universe fit. We can measure gravitational effects, and we understand the gravitational effects of the matter that we CAN see but there's a whole lot of gravitational forces from something that we CAN'T see. The best example is the expansion of the universe. It was recently discovered that not only is the universe expanding, but it is accelerating. The amount of matter required to exert the necessary gravitational forces that would cause the universe to accelerate outward is about 10 times what we can see and detect. Thus, dark matter.

I've always wondered if anyone took into account simple light and emitted electromagnetic radiation.

You figure, everything in the universe has been 'glowing' since the beginning of time. I imagine a good amount of that energy is lost, 99.9% (completely made up figure) of it never hitting any matter (and recycling the energy).

Sorta like evaporation. If matter and energy are two states, and they can't find most of the matter, its probably because its become energy and escaped quantification.

:shrug:

Pretty cool, was a big subject when I did physics at Uni up till last year.

When it really starts messing with your head is when they tell you that for every positive there is a negative i.e. Anti-matter!

I won't try and elaborate, break out Google if you want to know more.

Dougal.

then how they know it is there

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its like OXYGEN... its INVISIABLE! but we KNOW it is there... but there is a evidence of what oxytgen is made up of... now, say "dark matter" is oxygen for the universe... thats what they have NOW just discovered!

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