Nautilus

A Short History of the Missing Universe

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.

Astronomers have known where the universe’s missing matter has been hiding for the past 20 years. So why did it take so long to find it?Illustris Collaboration

he cosmos plays hide-and-seek. Sometimes, though, even when astronomers have a hunch for where their prey might hide, it can take them decades of searching to confirm it. The case of the universe’s —a case that appears to now be closed, as I reported earlier this month—is one such instance. To me, it is a fascinating tale in which clever cosmological models drew a treasure map that took

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Nautilus

Nautilus8 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
Consciousness, Creativity, and Godlike AI
These days, we’re inundated with speculation about the future of artificial intelligence—and specifically how AI might take away our jobs, or steal the creative work of writers and artists, or even destroy the human species. The American writer Megha
Nautilus7 min read
The Feminist Botanist
Lydia Becker sat down at her desk in the British village of Altham, a view of fields unfurling outside of her window. Surrounded by her notes and papers, the 36-year-old carefully wrote a short letter to the most eminent and controversial scientist o
Nautilus7 min read
A Radical Rescue for Caribbean Reefs
It’s an all-too-familiar headline: Coral reefs are in crisis. Indeed, in the past 50 years, roughly half of Earth’s coral reefs have died. Coral ecosystems are among the most biodiverse and valuable places on Earth, supporting upward of 860,000 speci

Related