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The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder helped detect the universe's missing matter.(Supplied: Kirsten Gottschalk, COMET)

28.05.2020

By science, technology and environment reporter Michael Slezak and the Specialist Reporting Team's Penny

 

After an intergalactic search lasting more than two decades, an Australian-led team of scientists say they have finally found the universe's "missing matter", solving a mystery that has long stumped astronomers.

Since the mid-90s, scientists have been trying to locate half of the universe's ordinary matter. They believed it was out there because of clues left over from the Big Bang, but it had never been seen.

"What we're talking about here is what scientists call baryonic matter, which is the normal stuff that you and I are made of," said Associate Professor Jean-Pierre Macquart, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.

Astronomy is full of missing stuff. Most of the universe is understood to be "dark matter" and "dark energy", which nobody has ever directly seen. But even more of a mystery for astronomers was that they couldn't find about half the ordinary matter in the universe.

 

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