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It is a remarkable fact that in the present day universe ~50% of the
baryonic matter is missing, in that it has not yet been accounted for
observationally. Hydrodynamic simulations of structure formation suggest
that these baryons likely reside in a warm/hot intergalactic medium
(WHIM), with temperatures in the range 1e5-1e7K. The WHIM is produced by
the shock waves that occur as gas falls from the diffuse intergalactic
medium onto the dense regions where galaxies form. In this talk, I will
review the "missing baryons" problem, discuss the current observational
status, and describe detailed theoretical models of intergalactic shocks,
that are directly applicable to the missing baryon problem,
and may provide a way to identify and measure the missing baryonic mass.
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