The day ended today at Flatiron with a great Colloquium by Eichiro Komatsu (MPA) about the temperature of cosmic gas. Gravitational collapse heats the gas, and that takes it up to something like 2 million degrees. This was computed ages ago by Peebles and others, but is now measured. There was a lot of discussion during and after about other heating mechanisms, and what things constitute gravitational heating. I'm interested in whether this result meaningfully constrains scattering interactions between the dark matter and baryons; if they scatter, and the dm is heavier, the baryons will (eventually) get exceedingly hot.
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