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missing mass

American  

noun

Astrophysics.
  1. the difference in mass in the universe between that observed to exist and that necessary for the closed universe model.


missing mass Scientific  
/ mĭs′ĭng /

Etymology

Origin of missing mass

First recorded in 1975–80


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Because gravity behaved as predicted, changing the law of gravity does not explain the missing mass revealed by these observations.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026

For more than two decades, only one experiment in the world has consistently reported detecting a signal of dark matter — the Universe’s missing mass that physicists have long tried to identify.

From Nature ● Mar. 18, 2019

The crash produced a new black hole containing 21 times the mass of the sun—the missing mass from the parent black holes was converted to energy in the form of gravitational waves.

From Salon ● Jun. 16, 2016

Suppose the π -meson is at rest and all of the missing mass goes into the muon’s kinetic energy.

From Textbooks ● Aug. 12, 2015

The missing mass has been converted into energy.

From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland

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