Updated

Updated · Livescience.com · Jul 24

CHIME/FRB Detects Missing Matter 4 Million Light-Years Out, Implicating Stronger Black Hole Jets

Updated

Updated · Livescience.com · Jul 24

CHIME/FRB Detects Missing Matter 4 Million Light-Years Out, Implicating Stronger Black Hole Jets

Q: Are violent 'galactic fountains' shaping the ultimate fate of our own Milky Way?

Yes. The new MIT result does not prove the Milky Way’s destiny by itself, but it strengthens the case that violent feedback processes are central to how our galaxy evolves. The study shows that much of the universe’s “missing” ordinary matter sits in extremely diffuse gas far outside galaxies, likely pushed there by energetic events such as black hole jets and exploding stars. That matters for the Milky Way because the same basic mechanisms operate here: stellar winds and supernovae drive gas out of the disk, and Sagittarius A*, the galaxy’s central black hole, has shown evidence of past outbursts and a present-day wind that is already shaping nearby gas. For the Milky Way, these “galactic fountains” help control the supply of star-forming fuel. Gas can be expelled into the circumgalactic medium, heated, mixed, and later fall back. That recycling can either trigger star formation by compressing clouds or suppress it by dispersing and heating cold gas. Over billions of years, that feedback affects how fast the galaxy forms stars, how metals are spread, and how the disk and halo develop. The Milky Way’s ultimate fate will still be set by several forces, not fountains alone. Its future merger with Andromeda, continued accretion of smaller galaxies, and the long-term behavior of Sagittarius A* will all matter. But the evidence increasingly suggests that feedback-driven outflows are not a side effect. They are one of the main regulators of the Milky Way’s long-term evolution.

3 articles · Updated · Livescience.com · Jul 24

Thousands of fast radio bursts let CHIME/FRB scientists trace long-missing ordinary matter to diffuse clouds in intergalactic space, rather than inside galaxies.
By matching FRB signal smearing with millions of galaxy positions from DESI, the team showed the radio bursts were dispersed by tenuous matter between galaxies.
The clouds extend about 4 million light-years from galaxies—far beyond simulation forecasts—pointing to black hole jets and exploding stars powerful enough to eject matter much farther than expected.
The result addresses a decades-old baryon gap: galaxies contain only about one-tenth of the ordinary matter expected since the early universe, when roughly 17% of all matter was normal matter.
Published July 21 in Physical Review Letters, the method is expected to sharpen as CHIME detects more FRBs, giving researchers a more precise map of the universe's missing matter.

Sources

Livescience.com90d ago

CHIME/FRB Scientists Detect Missing Galactic Matter Hurled by Violent Astrophysical Phenomena

heise online92d ago

Researchers Locate More Ordinary Matter in Galaxy Group Clouds, Intergalactic Space, Solving "Missing Matter" Mystery

space.mit.edu92d ago

Diffuse puffs of “missing” matter surround most galaxies - MIT Kavli Institute

6 Sources

What cosmic mystery will fast radio bursts solve next after finding the universe's missing matter?

We found missing ordinary matter. Does this help us find the far more mysterious dark matter?

Are violent 'galactic fountains' shaping the ultimate fate of our own Milky Way?

Solving the Universe’s Missing Baryon Problem: How Fast Radio Bursts Reveal 76% of Ordinary Matter Hidden in the Cosmic Web

Overview

For years, scientists struggled to find all the ordinary matter, or baryons, predicted by theory but missing from observations—a puzzle known as the 'missing baryon problem.' This matter was thought to be hidden across the cosmic web in forms hard to detect. A major breakthrough came with the discovery that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)—brief, powerful flashes of radio waves—could be used as a new tool to trace this elusive matter. By studying FRBs from distant galaxies, researchers can now map where ordinary matter is spread throughout the universe, finally solving this long-standing cosmic mystery.

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