A Short Study on the Nature and Significance of Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies, Type 1ax Supernovae, the Dragonfly Galaxies, and Others.

The Hierarchical Model of galaxy formation dictates that large, evolved, quiescent galaxies like our own formed billions of years ago primarily from the accretion of star clusters and dwarf galaxies. “Dwarf galaxies are at the bottom of this hierarchy and are believed to be the building blocks for larger galaxies”². This chronology is undisputed; however, researchers and theorists searching the most distant regions of space for evidence to support this model, within the Standard Cosmological Model, are instead discovering mature galaxies where we would expect none.

Astronomers have recently observed a fully formed galaxy, EGS-zs8-1, only 100 million light years from the distant edge of our universe. This galaxy formed 100 million years before the Standard Cosmological model predicts any stars were formed.²¹ Fulvio Melia states in his 2014 Astronomy Journal article, “It is difficult to understand how 10⁹ solar-mass black holes could have appeared so quickly after the big bang”.¹ Another supermassive black hole with a mass 800 million times that of the sun has been found when the universe was only 690 million years old.  “… it is hard to understand how the process happened so quickly, and how such an incredibly massive black hole could form so early in the history of the universe.”²²

Likewise, Dr. Roberto Abraham, lead researcher for the Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS) which has been studying the spectra of some of the most distant and faint galaxies in the universe concludes, “We are seeing that a large fraction of the stars in the Universe are already in place when the Universe was quite young, which should not be the case. This glimpse back in time shows pretty clearly that we need to re-think what happened during this early epoch in galactic evolution.”²⁰ Also, Dr. Karl Glazebrook, Co-Principal Investigator of the GDDS stated “highly developed galaxies, whose star-forming youth is in fact long gone, just shouldn’t be there, but are.”²⁰

How could these massive, evolved objects form so soon after Inflation? How confident are we that the runaway expansion of Inflation, the most energetic event of all time, suddenly ceased as the universe quickly cooled, giving rise to billions of dwarf galaxies and star clusters that in a very limited time combined to form galaxies containing massive black holes and billions of stars stretching tens of thousands of light years across space?

 The key to unlocking this mystery may lie in the study of recently discovered peculiar objects under intense study by astronomers; namely, ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, type 1ax supernovae and their host galaxies, and the Dragonfly galaxies. These objects help to demonstrate a universal phenomenon accounting for their peculiar nature, their apparent high dark matter content, and stellar velocities. These explanations will also account for the existence of quiescent galaxies at the farthest reaches of our universe and the true nature of the microwave background – all of which has implications for our understanding of how the universe evolved.

The search for and characterisation of UFDGs has become of great importance in near-field cosmology as a test of ΛCDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter) studies and the Standard Cosmological Model (SCM).

Digital surveys, like SLOAN, are unmasking local faint star groups found in the halo of our Milky Way (MW) that would be impossible to detect otherwise. Dr. Marla Geha of Harvard University has been studying ultra-faint dwarf galaxies and provides a fine presentation of her findings in the Keck video series entitled, “The Milky Way’s Entourage”³ presented at the Keck Week seminars in 2013.  As she states, in 2005 only eleven dwarf satellite galaxies were known within the Milky Way‘s halo, although computer models of the SCM predicted at least a thousand. By 2013, fourteen more were added to the list when Sloan Digital Sky Survey data was compiled, then the Dark Energy Survey added another twenty-five for a total to December 2015 of fifty UFDG. These new objects, the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, are some of the least luminous, least chemically enriched, and most dark matter dominant objects yet discovered in our universe.

Dr. Geha concentrated her work on the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Segue-1. The entire Segue-1 galaxy has a total luminosity only 300 times more luminous than our sun. In contrast, our Milky Way is 10¹¹ the luminosity of the sun. It also appears to have very few stars (a few hundred), and all have very low metallicity, [Fe/H]~-2 or less, and only half a dozen red giants⁴ of which Dr. Frebel notes “three of these seven (red giant) stars (in Segue-1) have metallicities below [Fe/H] = -3.5, suggesting that Segue-1 is the least chemically evolved galaxy known . . . red giant stars in Segue-1 contain fewer heavy elements than those of any other galaxy known”⁴.

From their spectroscopy, these stars are definitely first generation (so-called Population II stars) that have not evolved with the rest of the universe over many billions of years. Geha concludes, “The bulk of stars in ultra-faint galaxies formed before the epoch of reionization” ², the period directly following Inflation, then goes on to state “One question we would like to answer is why the faintest dwarf galaxies are so extreme in size, age, and dark matter content,” ².

U.C. Irvine astrophysicist James Bullock, who was not involved in the study states that, “A galaxy like this should have been able to make a million more stars, but it didn’t” ⁵…  “This study is so interesting because I really want to know, can galaxies form this small?” ⁵ says astronomer Beth Willman of Haverford College.

The work of Anna Frebel of MIT on Segue-1 sited in the Astronomical Journal by Scientific American noted that “these stars are made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, and contain just trace amounts of heavier elements such as iron” ⁵ . Segue-1, together with four other objects – Ursa Major II, Coma Berenices, Boötes I, and Leo IV, are candidates for one of the first galaxies ever formed in the known Universe. ⁴  “Segue-1 is so ridiculously metal-poor that we suspect at least a couple of the stars are direct descendants of the first stars ever to blow up in the universe” (co-author Evan Kirby, Univ. of California, Irvine). He goes on to explain that the lack of Iron in particular would mean the system evolved very early in the history of the universe from high mass stars that don’t live as long as low mass stars which produce iron.⁵ And yet in Bromm & Yoshida’s model of UFDG formation, based on observations of these objects they conclude, “one has to assume that the first stars typically were not too massive” ⁶.

These arguments contradict one another. In order for the stars to survive so long, they must be of extremely low mass; however, one would expect extremely metal poor population II stars to be of very high mass. I would argue that we are viewing phantom images of high mass and highly luminous stars that now appear mysteriously “ultra-faint” due to a peculiar cosmological phenomenon.

 Previously, satellite galaxies like Leo 1 were found with luminosity 10^-3 that of our MW. However, the new ultra-faint dwarf galaxies are 10^-6 as luminous as the MW and all have mass to light ratios greater than 1000, indicating a great deal of missing mass.

All of these anomalies taken together are perplexing. Dr. Geha concludes that these objects would be the most suitable candidates for dark matter studies. She argues that if there is so much dark matter present so close to earth, we should be able to detect gamma ray bursts as WIMPS collide.

To date, all efforts to detect dark matter have turned up nothing. “No convincing sign of WIMPs has been found coming from dwarf galaxies, including the most recent DES candidate dwarf galaxies, as preliminary results presented at the 2015 Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics conference in Torino, Italy, suggest” ². At the time, scientists at the XENONiT in Italy and the Large Hadron Collider said they still believe they will successfully detect dark matter in the next few years. A few years have passed. Rafael Lang, a physicist at Purdue University who works on the LHC said, “If we don’t see (evidence of WIMPs in the upcoming experiments), that means our ideas are completely wrong, and we really have to go back to the drawing board.” ⁷

More recently, in September 2016 scientists operating the most powerful dark-matter detector ever constructed, the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) announced they couldn’t detect any dark matter either.¹⁶ “They found no evidence for the existence of dark matter and were able to rule out a significant range of possible WIMP properties and masses.”²³

More recently, LUX has partnered with the ZEPLIN program to begin construction of the most sensitive WIMP detector to date, called the LUX-ZEPLIN or LZ experiment, which will come on stream in 2020. The failure of LUX-ZEPLIN to detect a WIMP with this apparatus will most certainly be a serious set-back for dark matter proponents.

 Paraphrasing an ancient proverb, Andrea Albert, research associate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University, suggested “The hardest thing of all to find is a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.” ²⁵

Another puzzling celestial object is the type 1ax supernova and its host galaxy. Over many decades, Type 1a supernovae have proven to be the best standard candle for determining the distance to deep space objects. Measurements of the massive explosion’s luminosity have been very consistent, allowing very precise measurements of distance to objects in deep space. However, in December 2012 a type 1a supernova was detected ⁸ with lower luminosity (one hundredth the brightness) than expected for a galaxy at that distance ⁹. Observational astronomers working with ever more sensitive instruments soon found 1 in 3 supernovae were of this new so-called type 1ax supernova (SNe 1ax).⁹

Although redshift analysis would appear to put many of these host galaxies relatively close, they are extremely faint, leading one to suggest the light from these stars has travelled a greater distance than the redshift would suggest. “The fact that the new supernova hasn’t been discovered until now is not attributed to the fact that it is fewer in number, but rather to its faintness” ⁹. One quotation suggested they’ve been “hiding in the shadows.” ⁹

Host galaxies of this new type of supernova were determined to belong to galaxies of young stars. “The researchers categorized the new supernova by examining 25 examples. They found that none appeared in elliptical galaxies, which are populated by old stars. This indicated that the new supernovae are located in young star systems.”

These galaxies seem out of place. Spectroscopic analysis suggests they must be extremely old galaxies but made up of young stars.

We know that during a type 1a supernova, the white dwarf star is destroyed in the event. One startling find is that in a type 1ax supernova, the white dwarf star survives. ⁹ A type 1a event requires the carbon/oxygen core of the white dwarf star to be destroyed. If it is not, how then can SNe 1ax be categorized in the type 1a class?

 Again, these observations are understandable when we realize they are among the group of phantom objects.

In 2015, a group of large, faint galaxies only 300 million light years distant¹¹ comprising very few stars for their size, was detected by the Dragonfly Telephoto Array in New Mexico. This group and others have since been referred to as “ultra-diffuse” galaxies.²⁵ The largest in the group, Dragonfly 44, is the same size as our Milky Way yet only 0.01 percent of its matter is visible; 99.99 percent of the galaxy cannot be seen.¹¹ Even the visible fraction “is not resolved into stars, consistent with expectations for a Coma cluster object”¹⁵. It is assumed this unseen fraction represents its dark matter component; otherwise, the stars which are moving at a very fast 47 km/sec ¹² could not possibly hold themselves together. Dark matter has been referred to as their “gravitational glue”¹⁴. From the observed velocity, Dokkum and his colleagues calculated the mass of the galaxy. “Using the Keck Observatory, we found many times more mass indicated by the motions of the stars, than there is mass in the stars themselves.”¹¹

The Dragonfly galaxies are seen in the Coma cluster – a dense, violent region of space with numerous galaxies whizzing around in their vicinity. Somehow, these faint galaxies appear as though they are shielded from this “intergalactic assault”, exhibiting no gravitational interaction with their surroundings.¹²

Another ultra-diffuse galaxy DGSAT 1 discovered in 2016, appears to be as big as a typical galaxy but emits very little starlight. “It shines with only a faint glimmer of starlight, has hardly changed for eons – and astronomers have no idea why it’s there or how it formed.” ²⁶

 I have grouped these large ultra-diffuse galaxies together with much smaller UFDG as they exhibit most of the same characteristics with respect to dark matter content and low luminosity stars. I believe the same phenomenon is producing these phantom galaxy images as well.

As stated in the introduction, one could question the assertion that the universe is 13.7 billion years old when we observe 13.6 billion year old light from large, evolved galaxies with massive black holes. However, it is ludicrous to suggest the universe may be tens or hundreds of billions of years older when direct evidence by observation beyond the visible universe is impossible, and the Inflationary model holds sway in all debates. So, it is as surprising to me as anyone to realise new observational techniques allow us to observe a great many ‘phantom’ images of celestial objects that shed their light tens of billions of years ago, yet are unexpectedly observable from earth in the present.

I am suggesting here that dwarf galaxies, host galaxies of Type 1ax supernovae, and others like the Dragonfly galaxies are images of celestial objects from our more primitive universe, observable in the present due to a peculiar cosmic phenomenon. How can past images of celestial objects outside our observable universe appear to us in the present? I believe this is the result of tens of billions of years of accelerated cosmic expansion, coupled with the linear propagation of light for tens of billions of years through the vastness of space.

The character and properties of light are fundamental to any explanation of celestial observations. In a recent personal discussion concerning LIGO with astrophysicists from NASA’s online Ask an Astrophysicist, they stated that gravity waves were recently detected “because the speed of light is constant over distance” even though there are “changes in the scale of the space between masses” ¹³ ; “stretching doesn’t affect the light used in measurement” ¹³. Of course, cosmic expansion is monotonic (it only expands); whereas, LIGO detected a minute oscillation in spacetime. Therefore, light propagation is independent of the stretching of space. The propagation of massless electromagnetic radiation is virtually unaffected by cosmic expansion unlike large masses of baryonic matter.

In other words, when referring to photons streaming through the vast expanse of space, the velocity of a photon of light will be constant with reference to its point of emission.

 Accelerating cosmic expansion on the other hand, will steadily accelerate large bodies away from all other points in space. Consequently, at the present Hubble expansion rate of about 72 km/sec/Mpc, light emissions from stars at the edge of our observable universe will eventually surpass light speed and will no longer be directly observable from the Milky Way. If we accept for the moment our universe to be much older than 14 billion years, continued expansion will see our MW galaxy speeding into the light of those same galaxies – light that had already past the Milky Way over billions of years.

Because light speed is constant with reference to its point of emission, whereas large bodies are accelerating away from those same points of emission, over tens of billions of years such a mechanism would eventually see our MW accelerating faster and faster into the object’s ancient photon stream, ultimately producing faint images of celestial objects from the past but in the opposite direction from their initial position in space. In time, the image of these objects would become stronger with a corresponding increase in observed stellar velocities.

Present knowledge dictates that cosmic expansion rates have varied over time, and are presently accelerating. Should we discover that some of the galaxies we’ve taken readings from to determine expansion rates be phantom in nature, these results may prove unreliable.

In Fig. 1, I have illustrated a mechanism by which the phantom image of an UFDG might be produced. This demonstrates only the concept of producing a ‘phantom’ image; the times and distances provided here are, at best, a point of discussion.

In this illustration:

– A star in a dwarf galaxy (DG) involved in the process of forming our MW galaxy emits photons of light at P1.

These photons stream into space at light speed past the position (in red) 100,000 light years distant, that earth will later occupy in the Milky Way.

 – At time = 0, the MW galaxy has not yet formed but the collective mass of progenitors surrounds this area in space.

 – Two billion years later, the DG is still emitting light (P2) and still moving and drawing closer in the vicinity of our MW galaxy which is growing and taking shape.

 – A billion years later, the MW has formed, and the dwarf galaxy no longer exists having been incorporated into the MW.

 – As space expanded, the light (P1 and P2) from the DG continued to stream into deep space at light speed.

 – At the same time, all of space was undergoing accelerated expansion which meant our galaxy was eventually moving at light speed (at L) in relation to the initial point of light emissions from the DG (at distance = 0).

 – Tens of billions of years later, as the universe continued to expand exponentially, we caught up with the light from the DG stars at P2’ – light that passed through our galaxy’s position when the MW was forming.

 – At this great distance from its origin, the image formed of the now-extinct DG would be too faint to observe except that due to cosmic expansion, we are receiving a billion years of light emissions in under 160 million years; thereby, enhancing the image to the status of ‘ultra-faint’.

The fainter stars of the DG will not be observable at all, even with modern telescopes. This fact, coupled with the impression the observed stars are moving at extraordinarily high speeds due to our accelerated velocity into the phantom stars’ photon stream, we lead us to the conclusion there is a great deal of missing mass, giving rise to the assumption there is a preponderance of undetectable dark matter.

Lastly, the phantom image is a mirror image of the original DG, viewed in the opposite direction from the original DG postion in space due to the MW’s continual acceleration into more ancient photons. Furthermore, the motions of the stars of the UFDG will be in reverse because we are receiving the images in reverse order of emission (ie. image P2’ before image P1’).

Acceleration into the ancient photon stream of these ancient stars would result in their highly redshifted light becoming less redshifted over time. Some phantom objects could eventually become blue shifted.

Inside our 13.7 billion light year sphere of observable universe, we could not be aware of the tremendous rate of expansion our celestial neighbourhood has undergone since the Milky Way’s formation at least tens of billions of years ago.

Some observations of UFDGs that support the ‘phantom’ hypothesis, include:

1. The ultra-faint luminosity of population II stars that should be of the brightest luminosity judging from spectral analysis.
2. It is unlikely the stars are of such low mass they have survived the whole span of over 13 billion years. Even a star the size of our sun will not live past 10 billion years.
3. Low metallicity. A dwarf galaxy in the halo of the present MW galaxy which has not been enriched at all over many billions of years is highly unlikely.
4. Only a few stars are visible in UFDGs. Where there should be thousands of stars we only see a handful because after tens of billions of years, other less brilliant stars are now too faint to be detected even with our modern tools.
5. A recent study to detect dark matter through gamma ray emissions from Segue-1 found nothing apart from background gamma ray emissions.
6.  The apparent high velocity of the stars is a combination of a more energetic period in the early universe and, to a greater extent, the result of our rapid acceleration into the ancient photon stream.

A similar phenomenon may be occurring with type 1ax supernovae and their host galaxy. I theorize that host galaxies of type 1ax supernovae formed tens of billions of years ago and were once directly observable from the MW but have since exceeded the speed of light relative to the MW position due to cosmic expansion.

In Fig 2, I have illustrated the process that produces a 1ax supernova image.

– The light A emitted from a distant host galaxy (HG) reaches the Milky Way (MW) at A’.  At this point, a white dwarf star (WD) in partnership with a companion star within the HG would be directly observable from the MW.

– At X, this white dwarf exploded in a type 1a supernova and the SNe 1a event is observable 6 billion years later from the MW at X’.

– Immediately following the explosion, the white dwarf star would have disappeared and an observer in the MW would see that the white dwarf star was annihilated in the type 1a supernova explosion.

– The MW and HG continue to accelerate away from each other at around 72 km/sec/ Mpc, eventually moving apart at light speed (L) and no longer directly observable to one another.

– Continued accelerated expansion of space eventually allowed our galaxy to intercept more and more of the light from the HG that had previously passed our MW galaxy.

– In time, as the MW further accelerated into this photon stream, the faint image of a distant galaxy would emerge in the opposite direction from the original object.

– The white dwarf (WD) star would be absent initially from the new HG image; however, following the fainter type 1ax supernova at X’’, the WD star would re-appear as earth accelerated into older light of the host galaxy at A’’. Note: the chronology is reversed from the original SNe 1a chain of events.

– Further acceleration of the MW into this photon stream would reveal even older images of the host galaxy, slowly increasing in brightness and frequency as we continue to accelerate into this ancient photon stream.

Two observations would distinguish these galaxies from those we are observing directly. Firstly, observed type 1ax supernovae and their host galaxy would be less luminous due to the additional distance its light travelled than can be accounted for by the host galaxy’s apparent redshift. Secondly, in a typical type 1a supernova the white dwarf star is annihilated in the event. The presence of the white dwarf star that produced the supernova after the SNe1ax event reveals that we are watching the event in reverse order. We are actually seeing the white dwarf before it went supernova due to the fact that we are receiving light of the galaxy in the reverse time it was originally emitted.

 In this scenario we recognize that phantom galaxies will be mixed in the same field with other galaxies we are observing directly. Currently, astronomers are reporting that 1 in 3 supernovae are of the type 1ax ⁹. Could one third of the galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field view be phantom galaxies? We know that “a universe with a low density of matter is older than a matter-dominated one” ¹⁰.  Consequently, a universe with less mass and fewer galaxies present will necessarily be older. In the near future, more powerful telescopes revealing fainter galaxies will likely increase the proportion of 1ax supernovae as well as other phantom objects.

Unexpectedly low luminosity.

Low luminosity has lead us to suspect these objects may be projections of light from beyond our observable universe. Star brilliance corrected for the influence of our accelerating velocity can give us some idea of the actual distance these photons have travelled.

Fuzzy images.  

Aside from the low luminosity, even with the development of high resolution deep space imaging, the pictures of these objects have been variously described as ‘very large, very diffuse’¹⁵, ‘ultra-diffuse’^11,15, ‘fluffy’^11,12, ‘dim, … dirty smudge on a photo’¹¹, ‘indistinct’, ‘wisps of clouds’^12,14, ‘ghost galaxy’¹², ‘very faint, fuzzy blobs’¹⁵ and other obscure definitions. In the case of the Dragonfly galaxies it was revealed that, as close as they are, even the visible fraction “is not resolved into stars, consistent with expectations for a Coma cluster object”¹⁵.  This group of galaxies, just 300 million light years away, could only be “spatially resolved”¹⁵. There is no reason in this day and age that a galaxy at this distance cannot be easily resolved into individual stars.

However, it can be appreciated that the image of a star or galaxy becomes indistinct or ‘fuzzy’ the further the observer is from the source of that light. Even pulsars at the edge of our known universe impart a better image than these Dragonfly galaxies. I would conclude that this light has been travelling a tremendous distance, making the galaxy’s image not only faint, but ‘fuzzy’.

Diffuse, Fluffy Image.

Often characterized as “diffuse” (ie. dispersed or, spread-out), or “fluffy”, these objects often appear oddly bloated in appearance. The stars are separated far more than expected. Partially, we’re not seeing many of the fainter stars in the group. Besides that, photons travelling tens of billions of years from their point of emission will separate these individual stars. If we were to track an individual photon from a dwarf galaxy in our primordial universe, it would track straight. Another photon leaving its neighbouring star at the same time would also appear to track straight unto itself. However, over billions of years, the location of that dwarf galaxy will have moved and ultimately disappeared in the building of galaxies. However, these two points of emission will have moved apart with the expansion of space. And even though that point of emission is so far away, it will result in a reversed image of stars that have separated one from another, resulting in a bloated, or diffuse image.

High Stellar Velocities.

The UFDGs and the Dragonfly galaxies are all considered dark-matter rich primarily because there’s insufficient visible mass in relation to the high velocity of stars in these systems. Otherwise, without more baryonic matter than can be accounted for, these galaxies would be too unstable and literally fly apart. However, accelerating into the photons from ancient stars would give the illusion of increased velocity – like a movie clip that is steadily speeding up – only this one is accelerating backward. As I’ve illustrated in Fig. 1, we may be intercepting a billion years of UFDG star light over a period of only 160 million years. Consequently, the stellar speeds we presently observe in these objects could be six times or more than their original velocity.

Increasing Stellar Velocities.

Over time, stellar velocities within UFDG and phantom star clusters will appear to increase, resulting in the illusion that the objects are increasing in dark matter content. I predict the objects exhibiting the highest dark matter content will likely show the most marked increase with time as they are likely associated with the more distant objects.

Low Stellar Metallicity. 

Astronomers have described all UFDGs as collections of some of the first stars ever formed in the universe because elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are extremely scarce in the stars of these objects. Low metallicity is difficult to account for in near-field cosmology; however, it would be expected in the phantom image of an ancient dwarf galaxy or star cluster from our primordial universe.

SN 1ax in an UFDG.  

If we were fortunate enough to witness a nova or supernova explosion in an UFDG it would also be very faint and due to acceleration, the event would be brief and peak luminosity would be late in the shortened event, rather than early in the curve as expected with a SNe 1a. Additionally, the white dwarf would remain following the event, as also observed with the SNe 1ax in phantom galaxies.

Gravitational Effects.  

One observation that would conclusively prove the truth behind phantom celestial objects could come from the lack of interaction with baryonic matter in their vicinity. If a star, galaxy, or dust clouds located within the object’s gravitational sphere of influence exhibit no gravitational effect in path or velocity as expected from the influence of the object’s apparent mass, we can conclude there is no ‘real’ mass there at all.

To date, the Dragonfly galaxies offer us the best opportunity to observe this complete lack of gravitational influence on, or from, their surroundings. The extremely turbulent and dense region of space in which these galaxies are observed appears to have no effect on them, and they are exhibiting no effect on their surroundings either.

 Another example is the dwarf galaxy Reticulum II discovered in 2015. Despite being only 23 kpc away from the Magellanic Clouds, astronomers calculate it is moving away from the Magellanic system at escape velocity. As close as it is to this huge system, it is not gravitationally bound to the system.¹⁷

Parallax. 

The most advanced probe utilizing parallax, the European Space Agency GAIA, can accurately measure the distance of stars up to 30 thousand light years; however, the closest Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies are over 50 thousand light years away. Recently, the HST was used to measure distances to distant Cepheid variables across the MW.¹⁸ I believe the HST would be able to accurately determine if there is any parallax in UFDG stars to verify if these objects are actually there or not. Even a very minute parallax would lead us to conclude they are at a specific distance. If there is no discernable parallax, we can conclude the object is not present there, or anywhere else, in the observable universe.

Homogeneity and the CMBR. 

In 1964, Penzias and Wilson were annoyed by persistent microwave radiation that was interfering with the reception from their new Horn microwave antenna. They first searched for sources of local microwave radiation in the immediate vicinity, and even the poop left in their instrument by pigeons. After eliminating all local sources of microwave radiation, Penzias and Wilson concluded they were detecting the microwave radiation Adler had predicted in 1948 would result from a Big Bang event. The conclusion that it is emanating from the farthest reaches of space is due to the fact it cannot be attributed to any objects observed in that direction near or far and therefore, must be coming from the outer reaches of space, beyond the furthest observable objects. The microwave radiation itself does not indicate the distance it has travelled. It is radiation we are detecting on earth, and theorists have made an educated argument the Big Bang, followed by Inflation, followed by Reionization produced it.

Adler predicted that the Big Bang would be accompanied by black body radiation in the microwave range. This is one of the primary supporting arguments for the Big Bang. However, this should not be particularly surprising as most objects, including stars, give off black body radiation. This same black body microwave background radiation could result from our acceleration into the photons from billions upon billions of stars outside our visible universe, once a part of it, accelerating away from us now at distances varying tens of billions of light years, at greater than light speed.

The CMBR exhibits a high degree of homogeneity. Whatever direction you look from earth, the CMBR looks virtually the same in all directions. The CMBR varies only 0.002 degrees Fahrenheit between its hottest and coldest regions. Presently, the Inflation model is the accepted explanation for this phenomenon. Minute fluctuations in the CMBR are thought to represent early variations in density that gave rise to the organisation of matter in the structures we now see all around us. However, one could argue that the variation in the CMBR is simply a reflection of the distribution of galaxies we see in our region of the universe that is consistent with the unseen galaxy distribution we can’t see.

The last images of celestial objects we see from earth at the outermost limits of the visible universe exhibit high red shift. Due to our near light-speed comoving relationship, their EM radiation is barely able to reach the earth. As these objects continue to accelerate away from us and we lose sight of them altogether, their radiation begins bombarding us from the opposite direction. As we continue to accelerate away from galaxies outside our visible universe, we observe their radiation in the microwave spectrum, as we accelerate into it.

The concept described in the ‘phantom’ hypothesis does not address the creation of the cosmos directly. At the same time, the hypothesis can account for much of the observed CMBR homogeneity, though with a radically different premise. In this hypothesis it is recognised, the light from objects at the far reaches of our observable universe is incident on earth with decreasing velocity resulting in increasing wavelength over time. When the light from these objects is no longer directly incident on the earth due to accelerating cosmic expansion, we will begin to intercept its past light in the opposite direction – light that had previously passed earth for billions of years. We will detect this long wavelength light also as black body radiation; however, it will eventually increase in frequency to the microwave range as we accelerate into it. As a product of universal cosmic expansion, this phenomenon is occurring in all directions.

Consequently, there is a region or “sphere” of space outside our observable universe, with innumerable galaxies that is causing past EM radiation, radiation that had previously passed this region of space, to bombard the earth in all directions from the opposite direction of the source. The celestial objects themselves will be unable to resolve into images due to their low individual intensity. This is light from objects like our own dwarf galaxies that surrounded galaxies across the universe as they formed tens of billions of years ago. This region of original emissions encompasses a sphere of space which could be billions of light years deep outside our visible universe. Every minute of arc from our perspective will have radiation from a stack of trillions of stars that are billions of light years in depth. The large-scale distribution of galaxies outside our observable universe will be relatively smooth – similar to our present region of space; therefore, the microwave radiation of billions of galaxies over billions of years in any direction from earth, superimposed on each other, results in the homogenous microwave pattern we see today.

 Another consequence of this model is the prediction that even as the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, the edge of our universe will be seen to move closer to us with time; the observable universe will become smaller over billions of years as a consequence of the continued acceleration of objects away from our region of space.

The Missing Satellite Problem. 

Current theories, simulations, and models of Milky Way formation predict that hundreds of small satellite galaxies should surround our galaxy.

“Our theories and simulations of how the Universe evolves tell us that the Milky Way should have many of these small, faint satellite galaxies,” Jason Rhodes, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com in an email. “However, they have been notoriously difficult to detect, prompting some people to say that they may not exist.” ²⁴

So, few satellite galaxies are in evidence and the majority are ultra-faint and highly dark-matter dominated. The problem lies in the necessity to make the Milky Way history fit inside the Big Bang “box”. If the universe is actually much older than 14 billion years, we can release the Cosmological Model from this constraint and realize the majority of satellite galaxies have already been absorbed into the Milky Way and the dark matter dominated satellites and clusters are phantom objects from an earlier epoch.

The Missing Mass Problem.

Currently, the scientific community is searching for a single answer to a variety of missing mass problems. There appears to be unobservable mass in the outer regions of galaxies influencing the velocity of stars in that region. There’s missing mass responsible for the formation of galaxies. There’s missing mass in UFDGs that would hold these objects together. In fact, there may be numerous reasons for apparent missing mass and phantom objects may be just one of those reasons.

 As already mentioned in the section on UFDGs (2.1), over the past 30 years, numerous experiments have been unable to detect the ‘dark matter’ said to comprise 84% of the universe mass, and responsible for galaxy formation and the phenomenon of accelerated star velocities in various celestial objects. Should the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment fail to find the particle responsible, we would need to consider other concepts such as Phantom Objects.

The Ever-changing Hubble Constant.

When Reiss and Costr …. conducted their research into the rate of cosmic expansion back in the late 1900s, they were expecting to determine the universal expansion rate was slowing. The inclusion of Phantom Objects in calculating the mass of the universe lead to the assumption there was sufficient mass to slow cosmic expansion. Instead, Reiss and Costr .. independently concluded that the universe was actually expanding at an accelerating rate. 

Other Proofs.

With time, a number of stars or star clusters may be identified within our own MW galaxy by computer algorithms, acting gravitationally as though there is nothing else in their vicinity.

 Still other proofs may arise when spectroscopic analysis makes qualitative comparisons and exposes anomalies between the ultra-faints and the true halo star clusters and dwarf galaxies surrounding our MW.

 Host galaxies of type 1ax supernovae are very faint. When examining the class and mass of stars in these galaxies it will become evident these galaxies would be expected to be more brilliant. Future detailed examination of these galaxies may one day allow us to look back in our records at the position of a type 1ax supernova to find that before the explosion no white dwarf was present, yet immediately after the event, a white dwarf mysteriously appeared.

¹   “The Premature Formation of High Redshift Galaxies” Fulvio Melia,

 Astron. J. 147 (2014) 120   https://inspirehep.net/record/1283596?ln=en

²   “The Booming Science of Dwarf Galaxies”, Symmetry Magazine.  Jan 5, 2016 http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-booming-science-of-dwarf-galaxies

³   “The Milky Way’s Entourage”. Keck Week Video #10. Marla Geha, Yale Univ. (2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tgY9zrYErw

⁴   “Segue-1: An Unevolved Fossil Galaxy from the Early Universe” 2014, by Anna Frebel et al

http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6116

⁵   “Fossil Galaxy May Be One of the First Ever Formed” Scientific American by Clara Moskowitz, April 7, 2014  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-galaxy-segue1/

⁶   “The First Galaxies” by Volker Bromm & Naoki Yoshida, 2011

https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March11/Bromm/Bromm7.html#7.1

 ⁷   “Last Call: Will WIMPs Show Their Faces in the Latest Dark Matter Experiment” Scientific American by Clara Moskowitz. (Feb 1, 2016)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/last-call-will-wimps-show-their-faces-in-the-latest-dark-matter-experiment/

⁸   “Type 1ax Supernovae: A New Class of Stellar Explosion”, Foley et al, The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 767, Number 1 (25 March 2013)

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/767/1/57/meta

⁹   “New Type of Supernova Discovered By Astronomers” Pierre Dumont

http://www.itechpost.com/articles/7153/20130327/supernova-type-1a-type-1ax-white-dwarf-core-collapse.htm

¹⁰   “How Old is the Universe” http://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html

¹¹   “A Weird Galaxy is Mostly Dark Matter” http://www.livescience.com/55902-weird-galaxy-is-mostly-dark-matter.html

¹²   “Astronomers Have Discovered a Massive Ghost Galaxy that’s 99.9 Percent Dark Matter” http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-discovered-a-massive-ghost-galaxy-that-s-99-99-percent-dark-matter

¹³   personal communication, Jake & Jeff of NASA’s “Ask an Astrophysicist”, Feb 29, 2016.UFDG

¹⁴   “Meet Dragonfly 44, the galaxy made of 99.9% dark matter”

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/dark-matter-galaxy-dragonfly-44?platform=hootsuite

¹⁵   “Forty-seven Milky Way-sized, Extremely Diffuse Galaxies in the Coma Cluster”  Pieter G. van Dokkum, Roberto Abraham, Allison Merritt, Jielai Zhang, Marla Geha, and Charlie Conroy.  2015, January 7. The American Astronomical Journal.  http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/798/2/L45/meta;jsessionid=B0A8C753D079E2148186B24AE207B40C.c3.iopscience.cld.iop.org

¹⁶   “Dark Matter Just Got Murkier” Lincoln, D.

http://www.livescience.com/56041-dark-matter-just-got-murkier.html

¹⁷ “Stellar Kinematics and Metallicities in the Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxy Reticulum II”, The American Astronomical Society, 2015, J.D. Simon et al http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/808/1/95/meta

¹⁸ “NASA’s Hubble Finds Universe is Expanding Faster than Expected” June 2, 2016. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/17/full/

¹⁹ “Hubble Reveals Observable Universe Contains 10 Times More Galaxies than Previously Thought” Oct 13, 2016. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/39/full/

 Histogram by Dr. M. Geha https://inspirehep.net/record/796786/plots?ln=e

^{20 “}The Early Universe Problem: Why Do Galaxies in the Early Universe Appear Old?” June 2011 http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/06/the-early-universe-puzzle-why-do-galaxies-in-the-early-universe-appear-old-a-galaxy-classic.html June 15, 2011

²¹ “Mystery of the Ultra-Faint Galaxies Solved” Nov 2016 https://astronomynow.com/2016/11/29/mystery-of-ultra-diffuse-faint-galaxies-solved/

²² “The Mystery of the Early Universe’s Enormous Black Hole” Dec 10, 2017 https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/10/opinions/quasars-black-hole-opinion-lincoln/index.html

²³ “Something is Wrong with Dark Matter” Sep 7, 2016 https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/opinions/dark-matter-analysis-lincoln/index.html

²⁴ “Ultra-Faint Satellite Galaxy is a Clue to Understanding Dark Matter” November 23, 2016 http://www.space.com/34814-faintest-satellite-galaxy-near-milky-way-found.

²⁵ “Dwarf Galaxies Loom Large in Quest for Dark Matter (Kavli Roundtable)” June 2015 https://www.space.com/29741-dwarf-galaxies-key-to-finding-dark-matter.html

 ²⁶ This ghostly Galaxy May Be a ‘Living Fossil’ from the Dawn of the Universe.” March 8, 2019 www.livescience.com/64914-anemic-galaxy-discovered.html

Supplemental Readings & Videos:

Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies (Sep 2016)   Tom Brown, Space Telescope Science Institute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAFjrASWPuQ

The Futile Contributions to Physics by ‘Crackpots’ Sabine Hossenfelder

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-for-autodidact-physicists