The aforementioned models of the cosmos, including the standard model of cosmology, have long posited the idea that the missing baryonic matter of the universe is locked up in vast filaments of gas stretching between the densest pockets of space.

Astronomers have finally tracked down missing "ordinary" matter, which they discovered hiding as gas spread out in the vast expanses between galaxies.

The universe has two kinds of matter. There is invisible dark matter, known only because of its gravitational effects on a grand scale. And there is ordinary matter such as gas, dust, stars, planets and earthly things like cookie dough and canoes.