Observations of the missing baryons in the warm-hot intergalactic medium

Abstract

It has been known for decades that the observed number of baryons in the local Universe falls about 30-40 per cent short<SUP>1,2</SUP> of the total number of baryons predicted<SUP>3</SUP> by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, as inferred<SUP>4,5</SUP> from density fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background and seen during the first 2-3 billion years of the Universe in the so-called `Lyman α forest'<SUP>6,7</SUP> (a dense series of intervening H i Lyman α absorption lines in the optical spectra of background quasars). A theoretical solution to this paradox locates the missing baryons in the hot and tenuous filamentary gas between galaxies, known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium. However, it is difficult to detect them there because the largest by far constituent of this gas—hydrogen—is mostly ionized and therefore almost invisible in far-ultraviolet spectra with typical signal-to-noise ratios<SUP>8,9</SUP>. Indeed, despite large observational efforts, only a few marginal claims of detection have been made so far<SUP>2,10</SUP>. Here we report observations of two absorbers of highly ionized oxygen (O vii) in the high-signal-to-noise-ratio X-ray spectrum of a quasar at a redshift higher than 0.4. These absorbers show no variability over a two-year timescale and have no associated cold absorption, making the assumption that they originate from the quasar's intrinsic outflow or the host galaxy's interstellar medium implausible. The O vii systems lie in regions characterized by large (four times larger than average<SUP>11</SUP>) galaxy overdensities and their number (down to the sensitivity threshold of our data) agrees well with numerical simulation predictions for the long-sought warm-hot intergalactic medium. We conclude that the missing baryons have been found.