‘Ordinary’ matter, that is, that which can be discovered and from which everything that exists is made, makes up five percent of the universe; the rest remains a mystery, as 25% is attributed to dark matter and 70% to dark energy, unknown components that science has not yet been able to decipher.
Of the five percent that can be captured, even in galaxies like ours, half were “lost” until a few years ago, when an indicator showed a path we could follow.
An international team of thirteen scientists, including Mexican university student Yair Krongold Herrera from the UNAM Institute of Astronomy (IA), confirmed the existence of ordinary matter lost in giant halos surrounding galaxies, known as the zingalatic medium.
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In these places, which contain very hot and thin gas, the matter is very diffuse and dispersed, making it difficult to detect with telescopes. Therefore, it was necessary to use X-ray research using public data from the XMM. Newton space observatories of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Chandra of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The joint work, which involved scientists from multiple institutions in the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, China and just Mexico’s Krongold, was published last October in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and highlighted for its scientific importance by the journal NOVA. the American Astronomical Society.
The discovery is relevant because it confirms where the ‘lost’ ordinary matter is located in galaxies, but it also allows experts to understand their evolutionary processes, opening new lines of research.
Krongold Herrera explained: “For a small galaxy, we don’t know where almost all of its mass is located. Of others, such as the Milky Way, where we live, we know about 50%; and in the case of galaxies much more massive than ours, the proportion of material lost is smaller.”
In the previous study, a few years ago, the student and his colleagues discovered this hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way. Now when they search for galaxies in whose sparkling galactic neighborhoods cold material has been identified, they have found it for the first time.
“Simulations and computer models tell us that around galaxies there is a very thin halo of gas that extends up to ten times the radius of the galaxy and is very hot, about a million degrees Kelvin.” At the place where some of this lost gas is located, “in the middle of ordinary matter, cold or hot gas with a temperature of 10,000 Kelvin has already been found, which was a first indicator of the new discovery,” he revealed.
Natural lighthouses
To capture this fine, diffuse matter, scientists turned to natural beacons: quasars, distant objects in the cosmos that radiate large amounts of energy.
Krongold Herrera explained that they did not want to observe the lighthouse, “but rather the shadow of what is between the lighthouse and the earth, because it is something that we cannot see directly because it does not emit enough light.”
The astronomical teams focused on a quasar that emitted abundant light and could reflect a shadow, evidence of “lost” ordinary matter and the potential to collect scientific data.
Astronomers collected data from three very distant galaxies where cold matter was discovered; This strategy used by scientists made it possible to obtain evidence and strengthen the research, as new results were obtained with the sum of the information from the three cases.
Detection had to take place in the X-ray range because the gas is so hot that it can only be detected in this wavelength. “Seeing the shadow when there is little light behind it is very complicated,” says the expert.
For Krongold Herrera, the result of this work is stimulating and invites us to now look at another line of research: how the surrounding galactic environment tracks the evolution of galaxies.
Source: La Neta Neta
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
