Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe.

The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday.

Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter -- the protons and neutrons that make up atoms -- but there also is an even larger amount of invisible "dark" matter.

Now about half of the missing baryonic matter has turned up, seen by the orbiting Hubble space telescope and NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, or FUSE.

"We think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe," said Mike Shull of the University of Colorado, who helped lead the study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The matter is spread as superheated oxygen and hydrogen in what looked like vast empty spaces between galaxies.

However, observations of a quasar -- a bright object far off in space -- show its light is diffused much as a lighthouse can reflect on a thin fog that was invisible in the dark.

"It is kind of like a spider web. The gravity of the spider web is what produced what we see," Shull said in a telephone interview. "It's very thin. Some of it is very hot gas, almost a million degrees."

This is where the dark matter comes in. The dark matter is heating up the gas, Shull said.

"Dark matter has gravity. It pulls the gas in," Shull said. "This causes what I call sonic booms -- shock waves. This shock heats it to a million degrees. That makes it even harder to see."

The atoms of oxygen are in a stripped-down, ionized form. Five of the eight electrons are gone. It emits an ultraviolet spectrum of light that instruments aboard FUSE and Hubble can spot, Shull said.

These web-like filaments of matter are the structure upon which the galaxies form, he said.

"So when we look at the distribution of galaxies on a very large scale, we see they are not uniform," Shull said. "They spread out in sheets and filaments."

Some faint dwarf galaxies or wisps of matter in these structures could be forming galaxies right now, the researchers said.

Shull and colleagues said these webs of hydrogen and oxygen are too hot to be seen in visible light and too cool to be seen in X-rays.

(Editing by Will Dunham and Xavier Briand)

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                              Thu May 1, 1:25 PM ET

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This handout image obtained in 2007 and taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our Sun. The space shuttle's pending upcoming mission to continue maintenance and repair work on the Hubble telescope, which had been set for August 28, will be pushed back four to five weeks, NASA said Thursday.

(AFP/NASA-HO/File)

                                 

                                 

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NGC 6050/IC 1179 (Arp 272) is a remarkable collision between two spiral galaxies, NGC 6050 and IC 1179, and is part of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster, located in the constellation of Hercules. The galaxy cluster is part of the Great Wall of clusters and superclusters, the largest known structure in the Universe. The two spiral galaxies are linked by their swirling arms. Arp 272 is located some 450 million light-years away from Earth and is number 272 in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on April 24, 2008. (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team - STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and K. Noll - STScI/Handout/Reuters)

                            

                             

                             Thu Apr 24, 11:33 AM ET

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In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary on April 24, 2008, this image of colliding galaxies illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail. All images have a common theme: galaxy collisions across space and time. Hubble reveals wondrous new details in this photo journal of 'galaxies gone wild.' (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage - AURA/STScI-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans - University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University/Handout/Reuters)