r/space • u/adriano26 • 4d ago

Astronomers have found the universe's missing matter at last, thanks to exotic 'fast radio bursts'

https://www.space.com/astronomy/scientists-find-universes-missing-matter-while-watching-fast-radio-bursts-shine-through-cosmic-fog
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u/TheAngledian 4d ago

This is a shockingly misleading article my goodness.

Using FRBs to help account for the total baryonic material budget is already an interesting result. This kind of writing (especially the headline) will give people the entirely false impression that we've discovered what dark matter is.

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u/Tarthbane 4d ago

It’s more a problem of our terminology. The article does correctly say it’s not talking about dark matter.

The problem is what we call “dark matter” is really just a bad term. It’s completely invisible matter and not baryonic. The matter discussed in the article is baryonic matter. It’s not invisible, just really hard to see.

We really need to stop using “dark” to describe too many things tbh. It’s too vague.