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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Setting Limits on Supersymmetry Using Simplified Models
Published on: November 15, 2013
Missing baryons and the warm-hot intergalactic medium
Fabrizio Nicastro1, Smita Mathur, Martin Elvis
1Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. fnicastro@cfa.harvard.edu
Abstract:
Stars and gas in galaxies, hot intracluster medium, and intergalactic photo-ionized gas make up at most half of the baryons that are expected to be present in the universe. The majority of baryons are still missing and are expected to be hidden in a web of warm-hot intergalactic medium. This matter was shock-heated during the collapse of density perturbations that led to the formation of the relaxed structures that we see today. Finding the missing baryons and thereby producing a complete inventory of possibly the only detectable component of the energy-mass budget of the universe is crucial to validate or invalidate our standard cosmological model.
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