He hasn’t actually filed this report, but did forward it on:
A SUMMER internship to learn more about astrophysics turned into a stunning coup for a Monash undergraduate, Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, when she helped solve one of the big mysteries of science.
Astrophysicists have long been baffled by a belief that the universe must have a greater mass than is visible in the planets, dust and stars that make up much of what can be seen, but no way of proving it. To keep the universe together and functioning the way that is does, they estimated that about half of the required mass was ”missing”.
Ms Fraser-McKelvie found some, and her discovery will aid the development of future telescopes in Australia.
Crazy. How’d she, this undergraduate, do it?
The 22-year-old aerospace engineering student, who works with the Monash astrophysicists Kevin Pimbblet and Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway, explained the solution simply.
”If we’re looking very very long distances from Earth we’re detecting mass but if we’re looking closer to Earth we only see about half the mass that we’re expecting to see. So this is what is called the missing mass problem,” she said.
”People have theorised that this mass has settled in filaments that extend between clusters of galaxies, so we tested and confirmed this prediction by detecting it in the filaments.”
Aaaand I’m lost.