Dear Editor: I have condensed my theory of dark matter in the universe for your convenience, and perhaps embellished it with a bit of Persian poetry. I invite you to publish it so our readers may critique it, and perhaps elaborate or correct it.
Light is the dark matter that science seeks to explain. What sounds more ridiculous: the statement that there are zillions of stars pouring light into Omar Khayyam's Bowl of Night, or the statement light has mass (Eddington) and the total of Omar's starlight has sufficient mass to make up 25 per cent of the universe, after 13 billion years of light emission? Omar Khayyam's bowl is the universe, and it is like a fishbowl without water, but otherwise full of the light that has been emitted by all those stars.
That is a lot of light, and since light has mass, it would really amount to something if compacted into one of our refuse compactors.
We believe there are zillions of stars, and some of these stars are 13 billion years old; we believe lightis-energy-is-mass; we believe the light from the stars completely fills the universe; we believe we cannot see light till it hits some object, at which time we see the object or the light source itself because our eyes have developed that sensitivity; we believe the light from the stars whizzes at great speed around the universe until it is eventually absorbed in that stonewall of stars that can be said to surround the universe; we believe that the light that remains unabsorbed is our dark matter.
So it boils down to the fact that all the light emitted in the universe by stars remains in play in the "bowl" for the full length of time it takes for that light to be absorbed. We can see stars on all sides for about 13-billion light years, so some of that light could be twice as old. Gamma-burst stars seem to confirm that idea.
In addition to the light emitted continuously from the stars, we have a daily input of light from evaporated or gamma-burst stars. All that matter must be included in the composition of dark matter.
So it appears to be safe to say that light is dark matter.
Harvey Tuura
New Westminster
