Contact: Jerome Drexler, 650-941-2716, drexlerastro@aol.com; www.jeromedrexler.org

 

SILICON VALLEY, Calif., May 18  /Standard Newswire/ -- A group of recent science articles about the discovery of the most distant and largest Lyman-alpha blob, dubbed Himiko, has the intriguing titles "Astronomers discover ancestors of modern-day spiral galaxies," "Mysterious Space Blob Discovered at Cosmic Dawn," and "Experts Puzzled by Strange Space Blob." They all relate to a scientific paper entitled, "Discovery of a Giant Lya Emitter Near the Reionization Epoch" authored by a group of 27 researchers led by Pasadena's Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and published May 10, 2009 in The Astrophysical Journal. The Carnegie Institution's April 22 news release quotes a team member.

 

"One of the puzzling things about Himiko is that it is so exceptional," said Carnegie's Alan Dressler, a member of the team. "If this was the discovery of a class of objects that are ancestors of today's galaxies, there should be many more smaller ones already found - a continuous distribution. Because this object is, to this point, one-of-a-kind, it makes it very hard to fit it into the prevailing model of how normal galaxies were assembled. On the other hand, that's what makes it interesting."

 

The Carnegie Institution news release also conjectures about the nature of Himiko. "It could be ionized gas powered by a super-massive black hole; a primordial galaxy with large gas accretion; a collision of two large young galaxies; super wind from intensive star formation; or a single giant galaxy with a large mass of about 40 billion Suns."

 

To Bell Labs-trained Jerome Drexler, the Himiko giant Lyman-alpha blob is a visual manifestation of and support for his relativistic-proton filamentary dark matter model linked to his Top-Down theory of galaxy formation. Of the Carnegie Institution's five possible descriptions listed above, Himiko seems to best fit, "a primordial galaxy with large gas accretion." More specifically, Lyman-alpha blobs are probably partially comprised of cosmic web filaments of Drexler's relativistic-proton dark matter, which he discovered in early 2002 and disclosed in his December 2003 book, "How Dark Matter Created Dark Energy and the Sun."

 

The large volumes of electrons necessary to convert dark matter's relativistic protons into hydrogen, thereby producing the blob's Lyman-alpha emission line photons, could be created by non-elastic collisions of dark matter's relativistic protons with photons from several possible sources. This could produce, in close proximity to the protons, large volumes of intimate pions, which quickly decay into muons, then into intimate electrons to transform the protons into hydrogen, thereby producing the Lyman-alpha emission.

 

Thus, Drexler's relativistic-proton dark matter model, in conjunction with his Top-Down theory of galaxy formation, automatically solves the "mystery" of Himiko and essentially predicts it. On the other hand, mainstream cosmologists, who support the Bottom-Up theory of hierarchical galaxy formation through galaxy mergers, would predict the non-existence of Lyman-alpha blobs and the non-existence of Himiko. Drexler posited his Top-Down theory of galaxy formation and his relativistic-proton filamentary dark matter model in his scientific paper, astro-ph/0504512, April 22, 2005, "Identifying Dark Matter through the Constraints Imposed by Fourteen Astronomically Based 'Cosmic Constituents,'" which is available at www.jeromedrexler.org.

 

Three years later, scientific papers began to be published supporting the Top-Down theory of galaxy formation by the following senior staff/institutions: Michael J. Disney, Cardiff University, October 23, 2008, "Galaxies appear simpler than expected," in Nature; Avishai Dekel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, January 22, 2009, "Cold streams in early massive hot haloes as the main mode of galaxy formation," in Nature; Cheng-Jiun Ma and Harald Ebeling, University of Hawaii, March 10, 2009, "An X-ray/Optical Study of the Complex Dynamics of the Core of the Massive Intermediate-Redshift Cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745," in The Astrophysical Journal; Chris A. Collins, Liverpool John Moores University, April 2, 2009, "Early assembly of the most massive galaxies," in Nature.

 

A Lyman-alpha blob is a huge concentration of protons, electrons, and hydrogen gas, in the early universe, emitting the Lyman-alpha emission line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman-alpha_line) . The Lyman-alpha emission line, in the ultraviolet at a wavelength of 121.6 nanometers before being redshifted, is produced by the combining of electrons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron) with ionized hydrogen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen) atoms (protons). These Lyman-alpha blobs are some of the largest known individual objects in the universe.

 

Some of these gaseous structures are more than 400,000 light years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_year) across. So far they have only been found in the high-redshift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift) universe because of the ultraviolet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet) nature of the Lyman-alpha emission line. Since Earth's atmosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere) is very effective at filtering out UV photons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon), any Lyman-alpha photons observed with Earth-based telescopes would be significantly redshifted. An upgraded Hubble may provide some UV data.

 

Himiko is a newly discovered gas/plasma cloud that predates similar Lyman-alpha blobs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman-alpha_blob) by about two billion years. It is 12.9 billion light years from Earth. An object 12.9 billion light-years away is seen as it existed 12.9 billion years ago, and the light is just now arriving. It appears to have about 10 times more mass than the next largest object found in the early universe, or roughly the equivalent mass of 40 billion suns. At 55,000 light years in diameter, it has about half the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. Let us now consider in more detail how Drexler's 2005 relativistic-proton filamentary dark matter model can provide a logical/plausible explanation for the Himiko Lyman-alpha blob that essentially predicts it.

 

The following four paragraphs introduce the astronomers' 2004 discovery of slightly curved dark matter filaments that form galaxy clusters where the curved dark matter filaments intersect/collide. Today it is widely accepted that the curved dark matter filaments also weave a cosmic web of dark matter filaments that is integral to all galaxy clusters and galaxies - the Lyman-alpha blobs should be no exception.

 

Drexler's relativistic-proton dark matter is the only dark matter model that (1) can form into slightly-curved, width-confined, long filaments of dark matter, (2) can generate electrons intimate with the protons via pions and thus produce hydrogen within the dark matter proton filaments, (3) can generate the Lyman-alpha UV line, and (4) can form the filamentary cosmic web that feeds the generated hydrogen atoms into the galaxies. This group of processes fits the Top-Down theory of galaxy formation very well.

 

These four features of relativistic-proton dark matter are also compatible with both the observed characteristics of dark matter and observed characteristics of Lyman-alpha blobs.

 

For almost all of the last twenty years, cosmology professors have taught that massive galaxies were formed by the gravitational collapse of small gas clumps followed by their gravitational merger into larger and larger galaxies. This is called a hierarchical galaxy formation process, which is in the category of the Bottom-Up theory of galaxy formation.

 

Drexler may have been one of the first scientists in recent years to question the hierarchical galaxy formation process. He did so by positing his Top-Down theory of galaxy formation in his scientific paper, astro-ph/0504512, April 22, 2005, "Identifying Dark Matter through the Constraints Imposed by Fourteen Astronomically Based 'Cosmic Constituents.'" On pages 8 and 13 we find the following two paragraphs to be very relevant to this discussion.

 

From page 8 of Drexler's 2005 scientific paper: "Long, large DM filaments creating galaxy clusters. The September 8-9, 2004 news releases from NASA/Harvard entitled, 'Motions in nearby galaxy cluster reveal presence of hidden superstructure' regarding Chandra x-ray images of the Fornax cluster states: 'Astronomers think that most of the matter in the universe is concentrated in long large filaments of dark matter and that galaxy clusters are formed where these filaments intersect.' It should be noted that such a filamentary dark matter structure could be a slightly curved portion of a DM halo around or within some galaxy supercluster. This relatively new top-down theory of galaxy cluster formation is compatible with the relativistic proton dark matter theory as described in the author's book published in December 2003."

 

From page 13 of Drexler's April 2005 scientific paper: "[Relativistic proton dark matter particles could] be concentrated in the long large curved filaments of dark matter (announced by NASA 9/8/04), which form galaxy clusters where the DM filaments intersect. See SigChar P. W, and X. Some relativistic dark matter protons are concentrated in curved long, large dark matter filaments owing to the high relativistic velocities of the protons and to the magnetic fields created by the astrophysical dynamo effect. The author believes that the DM filaments may be slightly curved portions of supercluster halos of DM protons, the widths of which [DM filaments] are confined electrostatically by the presence, within the filaments, of proton-produced [negatively-charged] muons and electrons (muons decay into electrons, etc.). Further, the crashing of intersecting DM filaments could lead to debris of relativistic protons at various energies and electrons from muon decay and slower moving hydrogen, helium and protons - all the necessary ingredients to form galaxy clusters, galaxies and stars."

 

The previous two paragraphs from Drexler's April 22, 2005 scientific paper support arguments that relativistic-proton dark matter in a Lyman-alpha blob (1) can form into slightly-curved, width-confined, long filaments of dark matter, (2) can generate intimate electrons thereby facilitating the creation of hydrogen within relativistic-proton filaments, (3) can generate the Lyman-alpha UV line [by the means described in item 2], and (4) can form the filamentary cosmic web to feed the generated hydrogen into all the galaxies, which precisely fits the Top-Down theory of galaxy formation. These four features of relativistic-proton dark matter are compatible with both the observed characteristics of dark matter and the observed characteristics of Lyman-alpha blobs.

 

The slight curvature of the dark matter filaments comes about because the kinetic energy of the relativistic protons in conjunction with the extragalactic magnetic field determine the radius of curvature of the protons' paths, according to the well-known Larmor radius equation. The width-confinement of the dark matter filaments comes about because the widths are confined electrostatically by the presence, within the proton filaments, of negatively-charged muons and electrons, which reduce the radial outward coulomb forces on the relativistic-proton filamentary stream. Both of these subjects are discussed in the above paragraph taken from page 13 of Drexler's April 22, 2005, scientific paper.

 

The formation of Lyman-alpha blobs is dependent upon the four cosmic features, mentioned above, as well as the creation of intimate pions through non-elastic collisions of relativistic-protons and photons. These intimate pions quickly decay into negative muons and then into intimate electrons, which combine with the relativistic protons to form hydrogen and generate the Lyman-alpha UV emission line. The protons and hydrogen would be conducted to a Lyman-alpha blob, such as Himiko, through the filamentary dark matter cosmic web, as per the Top-Down theory of galaxy formation. The Lyman-alpha emission line from Lyman-alpha blobs and from Himiko would be significantly red-shifted.

 

To create the necessary large volumes of pions that would decay into the electrons, which would then combine with dark matter's relativistic protons to form hydrogen and produce the Lyman-alpha emission line, some large supply of intimate photons would be required to enter into non-elastic collisions with the dark matter's relativistic protons, thereby creating pions. What photons are available for this task?

 

The obvious intimate photons that might possibly fit these pion-source requirements would include (1) the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons, (2) synchrotron emission photons generated by dark matter's relativistic protons racing through the extragalactic magnetic field, (3) the Lyman-alpha UV emission-line photons created in the early universe by the combining of electrons with protons to form hydrogen atoms, and (4) the muon-based Lyman-alpha X-ray emission-line photons created in the early universe by the combining of negative muons with protons to form short-lived muonic hydrogen atoms.

 

Note that the mass of a negative muon is 209 times the mass of an electron, which leads to the Lyman-alpha X-ray emission line for muons as compared to the ultraviolet Lyman-alpha emission line for electrons. More specifically, Aldo Antognini researching muonic hydrogen in Switzerland in 2005, reported, "The subsequent de-excitation to the 1S state emits a 1.9 keV Lyman-alpha x-ray," which corresponds to a 0.65 nanometer X-ray photon.

 

Share

Tweet