Observational Cosmology - Unit 4 Solutions

12. Estimates of the total gas mass involved in the Lyman alpha forest clouds, observed in QSO spectra, suggest that at z~3 these clouds account for most of the baryon density expected from cosmic nucleosynthesis arguments (see Table 3, Fukugita paper). We also know that some galaxies are in place by this redshift, but these appear to contain only a small fraction of the baryons.