# Missing Matter **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 6, 2017, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549 "2017-03-06T15:59:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549/21 "2017-03-08T18:53:41Z")
Ah … I think I get it now … even if dark matter is uniformly distributed throughout the universe … we only care about the dark matter within the orbit of these outlying stars … using shell theory … and the uniformity is because condensing matter requires the energy outlet of electromagnetic radiation … something dark matter cannot do … Am I in the neighborhood now? ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549/22 "2017-03-09T18:02:28Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Am I in the neighborhood now? Since no one else seems to be speaking up I will say: Yes, you are in the neighbourhood. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549/23 "2017-03-09T19:42:44Z")
**Asympotically fat** , I think I’ve mentioned before that I love your user name. (For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a pun on [asymptotically flat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotically_flat_spacetime)). (Hmm… perhaps he or she is surrounded by a large spherical shell of dark matter, such that from great distances his or her mass appears much greater than it actually is.;)) But, I just noticed you’re missing a t in “asymp **t** otically”. Is that deliberate? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549/24 "2017-03-10T13:11:50Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Ah … I think I get it now … even if dark matter is uniformly distributed throughout the universe … we only care about the dark matter within the orbit of these outlying stars … using shell theory … and the uniformity is because condensing matter requires the energy outlet of electromagnetic radiation … something dark matter cannot do … > > Am I in the neighborhood now? Still a ways off. It’s not the _total_ amount of dark matter within a shell that matters, it’s the _extra_ amount of dark matter that … matters. At the galactic scale, there’s a lot of extra. At the star system level, there isn’t. Tiny objects like the Sun are too puny to accumulate enough extra dark matter to be worth caring about even if you are a fan of lots of decimal places. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549/25 "2017-10-09T20:58:50Z")
Exciting News! **Half the universe’s missing matter has just been finally found** > [@](#): > > The missing links between galaxies have finally been found. This is the first detection of the roughly half of the normal matter in our universe – protons, neutrons and electrons – unaccounted for by previous observations of stars, galaxies and other bright objects in space. > > You have probably heard about the hunt for dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to permeate the universe, the effects of which we can see through its gravitational pull. But our models of the universe also say there should be about twice as much ordinary matter out there, compared with what we have observed so far. > > Two separate teams found the missing matter – made of particles called baryons rather than dark matter – linking galaxies together through filaments of hot, diffuse gas. > > “The missing baryon problem is solved,” says Hideki Tanimura at the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France, leader of one of the groups. The other team was led by Anna de Graaff at the University of Edinburgh, UK. > > Because the gas is so tenuous and not quite hot enough for X-ray telescopes to pick up, nobody had been able to see it before. > **[Half the universe’s missing matter has just been finally found](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2149742-half-the-universes-missing-matter-has-just-been-finally-found/)** > > About half the normal matter in our universe had never been observed – until now. Two teams have finally seen it by combining millions of faint images into one [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missing-matter/781549.md?page=1)