According to data collected from the Hubble Space Telescope’s spectrograph, the universe should have 80% more ultraviolet light than conventional theories and models. Astronomers are puzzled: “We still do not know what the case is, but one of the things we thought we know about the universe is not true.”
These are the words of the co-author of scientific paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal, David Weinberg. The Hubble Spectrometer has discovered that the hydrogen atoms that fly in the interstellar space do not ionize as expected. In fact, ionization is much greater and prevents the true source of radiation from being detected.
When these hydrogen atoms are irradiated with high energized ultraviolet light, they pass from neutral to ionized state. Astronomers were very surprised when they discovered many more ionized atoms than it should have, considering the ultraviolet light present in the Universe. The difference is about 400%.
Astrophysicists do not know what process is responsible for what we see on hydrogen atoms. The only thing they know is that these empirical results do not match any theory or simulation. The mystery becomes even bigger when comparing the results for the closest and further distant areas of the universe.
“Strangely, but the difference occurs mainly in the closest and well-researched areas of the universe. When the telescope and spectrograph our focus to galaxies billions of light years away, which shows what happened when the universe was young, everything works as expected and no missing links. The fact that ultraviolet light ionizes the right amount of hydrogen in the early universe, and in the near and younger areas ionization is four to five times more, puzzles scientists.
If we count the sources of ionizing photons in the ultraviolet spectrum, we will find that they are about five times less than we need. We miss 80% of these photons and the big question is where do they come from? One of the possibilities is an exotic “dark” matter that radiates in this spectrum, but so far we have had no opportunity to observe or measure it directly.
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