Scientist’s embarrassment may have been spared by the discovery of a large amount of gas lying along the edge of some galaxies about 400 million light years from Earth.
Results were needed to support a prediction that about half of the normal matter in the universe is found in a gas. There is no point having a theory without some backup evidence and this could be it.
NASA’s Chandra x-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton detected this gas in a wall shaped structure of galaxies called the warm hot intergalactic medium (WHIM).
The image below is an artist’s impression of the wall. Each spot in the wall is a Galaxy. A super massive black hole’s x-ray emissions shine through the wall as a starlike source and help in the identification of the gas.
Wall of gas
