The universe is glowing “more than it should,” but scientists may have finally solved the mystery

OUR universe is glowing more than usual, and scientists think it’s because of strange dark matter.

A new study has found that our universe’s natural light, or cosmic optical background, appears twice as bright as normal.

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This amount of luminescence is unusual for our universe; However, scientists believe that dark matter could be behind it.

Dark matter refers to non-luminous matter thought to exist in space.

It could come in many forms and is believed to make up about 85 percent of the matter in the universe.

Published in the journal Physical Review Letter, the research was led by astrophysicist José Luis Bernal of Johns Hopkins University,

“The results of this work provide a possible explanation for the cosmic optical background excess allowed by independent observational limitations,” the team writes.

“And that could answer one of the longest-standing unknowns in cosmology: the nature of dark matter.”

The study

The researchers used data and images collected by NASA’s New Horizons probe for the study.

Images captured by the probe’s LORRI instrument provided the most accurate measurement of the cosmic optical background yet.

In their measurements, the scientists found a light that exceeds what is expected from the deep galaxy by a factor of about two.

The researchers suggested in their study that this excess could be due to dark matter, but the data are too limited to say for sure.

“If the excess arises from the decay of dark matter into a photon line, there will be a significant signal in forthcoming line intensity mapping measurements,” the researchers write.

“In addition, the ultraviolet instrument on board New Horizons (which will have better sensitivity and will study a different region of the spectrum) and future studies on the attenuation of very high-energy gamma rays will also test this hypothesis and extend the search for dark matter to a larger one.” frequency range.”

The Dark Matter Paradox

Dark matter has puzzled scientists for decades since it was first proposed in the 1930s.

Studies are constantly trying to find out if this strange phenomenon really exists.

And matters only got more complex when recent studies found that some galaxies may be devoid of material.

One galaxy, AGC 114905, is one of several galaxies astronomers have discovered in recent years that are said to be devoid of dark matter.

Galaxies that are theoretically devoid of dark matter are not only puzzling to scientists, but also paradoxical to the assumption that our own galaxy and nearby Andromeda possess them.