For decades, the simulations we’ve run have predicted the existence of long strands of baryons — particles like protons and neutrons — in the space between galaxies, connecting them together, and now, two teams of scientists have finally succeeded in spotting those filaments, proving that our universe simulations are correct. If our simulations can predict baryon filaments this accurately, they should be able to predict dark matter with just as much precision.



Finally finding the extra baryons that have been predicted by decades of simulations validates some of our assumptions about the universe. “Everybody sort of knows that it has to be there, but this is the first time that somebody — two different groups, no less — has come up with a definitive detection,” says Ralph Kraft at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts. “This goes a long way toward showing that many of our ideas of how galaxies form and how structures form over the history of the universe are pretty much correct,” he says.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Half the Universe’s Missing Matter Has Finally Been Found