AaS! 128: Why are we missing all the baryons?
Ask a Spaceman!
Paul M. Sutter
4.8 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
What is the “missing baryon problem”? How do we know how many baryons there ought to be? What does the cosmic web have to do with it? What the heck is a baryon, anyway? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sometimes it feels like we have no idea what's going on. |
| 0:12.8 | As in zero. |
| 0:16.0 | Totally nothing. |
| 0:16.8 | We might as well be back in the Stone Ages for all the mysteries that remain in the universe, |
| 0:23.1 | which I suppose isn't the worst thing. |
| 0:26.3 | As long as there are mysteries of the cosmos, then astronomers can all keep working. |
| 0:30.9 | You know, a little job security never hurts, right? |
| 0:33.8 | But some days it gets a little bit too overwhelming, just a little bit too much, especially when it comes to cosmology, the study of the whole entire universe. |
| 0:45.0 | Okay, fine. Look, we know some things. We know about the Big Bang. We know how structures form. We know about the cosmic microwave background. We, uh, I'm sure we know some more things in their entire books about the subject, but those are the main ones. |
| 1:03.4 | And perhaps the most frustrating thing of all is that we know what the universe is made of, but by and large, we don't know what those things are. |
| 1:13.6 | The kind of matter that we know and love, electrons, protons, neutrons, you and me, stars |
| 1:21.9 | and galaxies, cheese and crackers, etc., are such an overwhelmingly tiny portion of all the contents of the universe that if you |
| 1:30.0 | could flip a switch and erase all of it from existence, yes, even the cheese, it would barely |
| 1:35.8 | register in the march of cosmic history. We, and more importantly, everything like us, |
| 1:43.7 | simply don't matter. Five percent. That's it. Five percent. |
| 1:51.7 | The kind of matter that we are, which is known as barionic matter, and barion means heavy, |
| 1:58.8 | and honestly, it's a poor choice of words because heaviness has nothing to do with it |
| 2:02.3 | But once again, I'm not in charge of jargons and we all just have to roll with it |
| 2:06.0 | The kind of matter that we are take up no more than 5% of all the mass and energy in the entire universe |
| 2:12.5 | and what's worse? We don't know where most of the barions are We don't know where most of the barions are. We don't know where most of the normal matter |
| 2:21.4 | is. I'm serious of all the barionic or normal matter out there, only a small, and we can get into |
| 2:29.3 | a debate of whether, even though it's a small fraction, we still call it normal, whatever, there's a human |
... |
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