Cosmic Missing Light Crisis Revealed

[MyOtherAccount]

Anyway, I liked the part about them not finding the effect localy. Now that's mysterious.

I got it all fingered out!!!

Either:

• the far is real and the local doesn't exist
  

OR

• the far is inversely proportional to the distance quebed and the local is inversely proportional to the distance quebe rooted
  

Brain: Pinky are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Pinky: What? Long live the ceen?

Brain: No! That there is so little light that we are spelling things wrong!

[Uncle Sam]

Light propagates spherically. Light pointed directly away from us remains unknown unless reflected, but if the emitter is far enough away, a whole lot of light not pointed at us gets here.

Harte

You are talking about all kinds of stars, but some stars don't exactly emit the whole spectrum of colors light is made of.

[Shiloh17]

I think the Vantablack has been sucking all the light up.

[Silent Trinity]

There are a lot of variables 'out there' I think, some of which we are only just beginning to understand, some remain hidden to us, I think all this light phenomena is, is a visual reminder that we don't know everything about the universe, and there are facets of it that our current scientific knowledge does not have the answers for.

Who knows where the 'missing' light has gone, but what with postulated dark matter, wandering black holes etc, there could be any number of culprits. Or perhaps it is a simple peccadillo of light in the vacuum of space within certain regions or under certain circumstances..... definitely a food for thought article, well done!

[Harte]

The fish in the aquarium try and understand the light switch outside it.

"We are property" -Charles Fort, as quoted in the Sinister Barrier

The octopus in the other aquarium see the fish, crawls out of his aquarium, drags himself across the floor, climbs up to the other aqaurium, enters and eats the fish.

Harte

[Frank Merton]

Personally I like the idea of decaying dark matter generating ultraviolet light. Not too hard to think of ways to check on this either, since we already have an idea of the distribution of dark matter here and there. The difference between the little if any decay early on in cosmic history and the present decay rates should also give a good idea of half-lives of some fundamental material, I would think a good clue as to what it is (since I suspect the stuff comes in several flavors, it would have varying decay rates).

By the way, this is all my speculation; no claims here.

[qxcontinuum]

wouldn't be because of the black holes, known to absorb light?

[+DieChecker]

If there is "missing" light, then is there missing energy? If there is less energy, does that mean there is more mass?

[GigglyRedhead]

It probably has something to do with Black Hole, the nearest one is said to be getting bigger from what I hear.

[andy4]

I thought that this article meant that there are too many ionized particles activated by ultraviolet light, and that there aren't enough sources to make up the discrepancy in how many particles are ionized compared to the sources. Not that there is light being eaten up by black holes or light is disappearing. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[andy4]

Personally I like the idea of decaying dark matter generating ultraviolet light. Not too hard to think of ways to check on this either, since we already have an idea of the distribution of dark matter here and there. The difference between the little if any decay early on in cosmic history and the present decay rates should also give a good idea of half-lives of some fundamental material, I would think a good clue as to what it is (since I suspect the stuff comes in several flavors, it would have varying decay rates).

By the way, this is all my speculation; no claims here.

http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/02/x-rays-other-galaxies-could-emanate-particles-dark-matter

I agree with that. According to the above article, dark matter decays into photons, albeit very slowly. Photons can also ionize atoms, which I believe would be responsible for the extra ionization in the universe which is supposedly missing. Also 84.5% of the universe is thought to be dark matter and now all of a sudden there is a discrepancy of 80% of particle ionization in the universe. Another thing to ponder is how there was once less dark matter in the universe than there currently is. Perhaps if dark matter is slowly decaying and does so incredibly slowly, than maybe the discrepancy in why the "missing" light is only apparent here is because the slowly decaying dark matters' photons from afar have not reached us yet.

Just my little theory on this.

Edited July 15, 2014 by andy4

[+DieChecker]

I thought that this article meant that there are too many ionized particles activated by ultraviolet light, and that there aren't enough sources to make up the discrepancy in how many particles are ionized compared to the sources. Not that there is light being eaten up by black holes or light is disappearing. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I think you are right. The idea, I think, is that there is not enough intergalactic UV to excite the intergalactic hydrogen to the levels seen locally (on a galactic scale). It is the UV that presumably excites the hydrogen that seems to be coming from no where that is the mystery.

[andy4]

I think you are right. The idea, I think, is that there is not enough intergalactic UV to excite the intergalactic hydrogen to the levels seen locally (on a galactic scale). It is the UV that presumably excites the hydrogen that seems to be coming from no where that is the mystery.

Ok, just checking to make sure I read that correctly, thanks.

If it isn't dark matter there will probably be a lot of head scratching in the near future. Quite a mystery, but a fun and fascinating one it is.

Edited July 16, 2014 by andy4

[andy4]

I was thinking about the missing light (uv source) problem today. Could it be that the missing sources can't be found because they are artificial? Hear me out.

Deep space lasers will probably be used en masse in the future to communicate and send signals SETI style in space. Uv, which lasers emit, can ionize hydrogen, which is the most common element in the universe. Now, SETI says that an intelligent civilization will most likely use the hydrogen line to communicate with radio waves, hydrogen line being a frequency which travels well through hydrogen. Now if lasers can activate hydrogen and ionize it, perhaps we just aren't intelligent enough to figure out and pinpoint the source of the ionization (obviously), or that it's meant for deep space communication, or as a signal from intelligent life.

A problem stated in the article also says that the older universe doesn't have a "missing light" discrepancy, and they can't figure out why. Maybe it's possible that intelligent life, if we look at earth as an example, takes time to evolve, and that is why the early universe has no "extra" uv unaccounted for. Intelligent life hadn't started sending signals yet.

Just my 2 cents here, just a passing thought.

Edited July 16, 2014 by andy4

[nik-h]

Or our 'Laws' of Physics &/or the maths are wrong...

[Parsec]

Ok, just checking to make sure I read that correctly, thanks.

If it isn't dark matter there will probably be a lot of head scratching in the near future. Quite a mystery, but a fun and fascinating one it is.

Yeah, the article (and especially its title) is a bit misleading, che calculations show that we miss 80% of the source of the light, not the light itself.

[...] A problem stated in the article also says that the older universe doesn't have a "missing light" discrepancy, and they can't figure out why. Maybe it's possible that intelligent life, if we look at earth as an example, takes time to evolve, and that is why the early universe has no "extra" uv unaccounted for. Intelligent life hadn't started sending signals yet.

Just my 2 cents here, just a passing thought.

That's a very interesting idea!

I thought something similar, although simpler without the "artificial" part: if we find this discrepancy only near us, maybe it's not a long process that takes time to be evident (like a long decay rate), but it's a new one, that wasn't present in the distant past.

As far as we know, this could be a brand new phenomenon and we're witnessing its beginning.

And this leads to another question: if it's new and "something" is becoming ultraviolet light, what's triggering it? Why is it changing and why now? Maybe we're entering in a new phase of the universe, where (or bettern, when) some balance still unkonwn to us has changed and that's the result of it.

Or maybe it's really connected somehow with the (always usefull for hypothesis) dark matter.

One thing fore sure usefull would be knowing from when there's the discrepancy.

Now I'm half asleep, I go before I write something even more stupid!

[SaraT]

Well, there's no satisfying scientists. Some of them say we're using too much electricity and depleting the planet of its resources, so we shouldn't have so many lights. And now some are saying there isn't enough light in the universe. They really should make up their mind!