Another clue about the whereabouts of the missing matter in the Universe has just emerged from amid the largest local cosmic structure. X-ray observations have revealed a massive filament of hot gas in the enormous, 8,000-galaxy strong Shapley Supercluster. www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

The excellent press release by ESA regarding our latest work and the first unambiguous detection of the missing baryons and warm-hot intergalactic medium in a single filament!

NOVA press release: Astronomers analyse huge, hot filament of missing normal matter
www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/en/as...

Article by Migkas et al. www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004...

Featured image: X-ray emitting filament connecting galaxy cluster (Migkas, K., et al., 2025, A&A, 698, A270)
www.aanda.org/component/is...

Finally, Astronomy & Astrophysics made us their Featured Image 🙂 www.aanda.org/2025-highlig...

The cosmic filament is 7.2 Mpc long, exhibits ~20% excess emission compared to the background, has a temperature of ~1 keV, gas particle density of ~10^-5/cm^3, and a baryon overdensity of ~35, making it the first pristine single filament ever detected in Xrays!

We apply a novel method to isolate the missing baryons/WHIM emission from surrounding clusters and X-ray bright black holes thanks to Suzaku's sensitivity to diffuse, faint sources and XMM's power for studying black hole emission. Using X-ray spectroscopy, we find:

Several press releases from @esa.int @unileiden.bsky.social @unibonn.bsky.social @sronspace.bsky.social and others are out!

www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

📢Paper and press releases day! We report the first-ever unambiguous detection of WHIM/missing baryons in a single cosmic filament using @ESA_XMM
and @JAXA_en
Suzaku data! It's the first time observations agree with LCDM simulations for the nature of WHIM www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

Delighted to share that I got yet another research grant from @unileiden.bsky.social and the Fonds Rijke-Hamaker fund! 🥳 This grant will support my analysis of new X-ray data of galaxy clusters that will eventually help us further refine our understanding of the uniformity of cosmic expansion!

🚀 Exciting news! Our proposal for the Lorentz Workshop, focusing on Cosmology with Galaxy Clusters is approved for 8–12 Dec 2025 🎉
@lorentzcenter.bsky.social , @unileiden.bsky.social
We'll bring together cluster enthusiasts and dive into the latest in cluster cosmology! tinyurl.com/lorentzclust...

(My first post) I'm thrilled to receive an NWO Open Competition grant to test the uniformity of cosmic expansion at local and distant cosmic scales, using eROSITA and @esa.int XMM-Newton data of X-ray galaxy clusters! This means I get to stay longer at Leiden Observatory 🥳 tinyurl.com/NWOgrant