Australian student solves astrophysics mystery

An Australian student has discovered a part of the universe that astrophysicists have spent decades trying to find, Australia's Monash University on Friday confirmed in a statement.

Astrophysicists have long thought the universe has a greater mass than is visible in the planets, but they had no way of proving it is there.

Undergraduate student Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, 22, was on a summer internship at Monash University to learn more about astrophysics, when she managed to solve one of the big mysteries of science.

Fraser-McKelvie, an aerospace engineering student, conducted a targeted X-ray search for the matter and found evidence of it within three months.

Her tutor, Kevin Pimbblet, said the discovery is significant.

"We've been looking for this ordinary matter for a couple of decades," he said in a statement on Friday.

"It's been published in one of the most prestigious journals in the world, so astronomers all over the world will be able to read this article."

Scientists had thought the matter would have a temperature of about 1 million degrees Celsius, 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, and should therefore be observable at X-ray wavelengths.

Amelia Fraser-McKelvie's discovery has proved that prediction is correct, Pimbblet said.

The trio published a research paper on the missing mass in one of the world's oldest and most prestigious scientific journals, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

He said the discovery could change the way telescopes are built.

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