The proton is the unit of account in the universe

Missing protons between galaxies mediate the connections as they reach maximum entropy.  That is the missing matter.

“This result establishes the presence of ionised gas in large-scale filaments, and suggests that the missing baryons problem may be resolved via observations of the cosmic web,” said the authors of the second study.“The missing baryon problem is solved,” claims Hideki Tanimura at the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France, leader of one of the groups.The result is not surprising from a theoretical perspective, as filaments of gas linking galaxies together have been predicted for years, through models that have been developed and compared with observation. One of the theories that makes these filaments’ existence likely is dark matter, for example. But the ability to look using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data and identify the missing mass is a big step 

Here is how I think of it. All these free space protons run a low bandwidth communications channel used for one purpose, deciding, in the aggregate, what is the best estimate of Pi.