Missing Gas Found in Milky Way

The true abundance in the Milky Way of a heavy, primordial form of hydrogen has eluded scientists for decades, but it turns out that huge quantities of it have been hidden in the dust that is scattered between stars.

The new finding relied on satellite measurements of a type of hydrogen called deuterium and found that its distribution in our galaxy is patchy rather than uniform. It will force big changes in theories about star and galaxy formation, astronomers say.

"Since the 1970s we have been unable to explain why deuterium levels vary all over the place," said Jeffrey Linsky, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "The answer we found is as unsettling as it is exciting."

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