Rudolph E. Schild
					Center for Astrophysics
					60 Garden Street
					Cambridge MA 02138
					rschild@cfa.harvard.edu



	       WHITE PAPER ON THE DARK ENERGY PROBLEM

1. INTRODUCTION

There probably is no dark energy.

Recall that previous to the 1998 supernova brightness anomalies, there was
no evidence for dark energy. Today evidence for dark energy comes creeping
out of every dark corner of theoretical misunderstanding of complex
astrophysical processes, purely from bandwagon following.

And why would we be so concerned about brightnesses of distant supernovae
when the universe is dominated by baryonic AND non-baryonic dark matter
and so we have no idea of how the dominant matter of the universe is
affecting the transparency of the universe.

Recall that the entire discussion about the transparency of the universe is
a discussion about extinction and reddening. But the transparency of the
universe is probably limited by achromatic refraction.

The refraction is caused by the Ly_alpha clouds acting as spherical
lenses. Recall that when the Ly_alpha clouds were first discovered, it was
concluded that there must be some hot-intercluster-medium providing
pressure to keep them from evaporating. Subsequent X-ray and other studies
failed to find evidence for such a hot-intercluster-medium, and today there
is no guess about what keeps the Ly_alpha clouds from evaporating.

The resolution of this is given in Schild 2004 astro-ph/0409549. The clouds
are not confined, but are slowly evaporating. At the same time, the
baryonic dark matter primordial planetoids which nucleate the clouds 
are slowly evaporating and
replenishing the clouds. Thus the entire baryonic dark matter of the
universe, which already had been discovered by Schild (1996, ApJ 464, 125)
from quasar microlensing, can now be understood to be the source of the
ubiquitous Ly_alpha clouds, seen by the thousands in any quasar spectrum,
and any centrally condensed object becomes a spherical lens that refracts 
and de-focuses the light from a distant source. The hydrodynamics community
has long ago predicted that the baryonic dark matter should have made such
a population of planetary mass "Primordial Fog Particles" at the time of 
recombination, 300,000 years after the big bang (C. Gibson, 1996, Appl. 
Mech. Review. 49, 299; astro-ph/0003352).

If such dimming occurs, is there other evidence of it? Notice that in this
process the light of the distant supernova and quasar is not absorbed, but
is just re-directed, and so it should produce two effects:

1. There should be little halos around distant supernovae and quasars.

2. There should be a significant cosmic background radiation.

Both have been seen!

2. CONFIRMING OBSERVATION OF SMALL HALOS

With regard to the small halos, they would not be commented upon if seen
because supernovae are often seen in young star groups and blending with
other group members would be unsurprising, especially for type 2
supernovae. And fuzz around quasars is well known because the host galaxy
is often seen as faint fuzz around the stellar quasar image, and the bright
stellar component scatters light in spectrographs and makes significant
claims about the fuzz suspicious. But the fiber-optic bundle field
resolving spectroscopy of AGN Mrk 509 by Mediavilla et al, (1998, ApJ 
494, L8) shows such a halo out to 8 kpc from the central source in the
light of the broad emission lines. The possibility of a broad emitting
cloud 16 kpc in diameter is rejected and the observations were interpreted 
in terms of scattering, with refraction not considered. Numerous other
examples of such quasar halos observed with this instrument are given by 
the same author. Thus the small halos around cosmological sources probably
have been detected, and whether caused by scattering or refraction, they
will reduce the transparency of the universe.

3. OBSERVATION OF THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT

The subject of the extragalactic background light is contentious because
while its detection has been claimed, it is a faint background component
seen against a bright foreground originating in the solar system (the
zodiacal light). The most recent report by Dwek et al (2005,
astro-ph/0508262) concludes that it is too bright to be understood as
resulting from any Pop III sky background model. Thus it is probably
caused by the light that is refracted out of the beams of cosmological
distant sources. 

4. TRANSMISSION OF THE UNIVERSE TO LIGHT OF QUASARS

The study of quasars has long ago produced a puzzling observation that is
probably relevant. It has long been known that the number of quasars peaks
at a redshift around z = 1.9. This means that if we consider all directions
of space and ask how many quasars are contained as a function of redshift,
that function will peak at z = 1.9

There is presently no accepted theory of the formation of quasars, and this
peak in the number distribution is unexplained. However it can be easily
understood as resulting from the reduced transparency of the universe also
seen in the supernovae.

Recall that the supernova brightness - redshify relation purported to
demonstrate dark energy shows about a 1.4 magnitude deficit for the
quasar peak at z = 1.9. In other words, the dark matter cosmology
curve is fainter than the standard cosmology curve at the quasar density
peak by 1.4 magnitudes. This means that the transmission losses by the dark
matter are becoming significant at these redshifts, and the proposal is that
both the supernova brightness deficit and the quasar brightness peak can
reasonably be understood as resulting from reduced transmission of the
universe due to the baryonic dark matter.

Moreover, the exact form of the reduced transmission law exactly fits the
supernova observations. It has long been known (Zuo and Lu, 1993, ApJ 418,
601) that the density of Ly_alpha clouds increases with redshift as 
(1+z)^2.8. It has also been noticed by Goobar et al (2002, A&A 384, 1) that
an absorption law scaling as (1+z)^3 and constant thereafter, can explain
the supernova brightness-redshift relationship of Riess et al (2004;
astro-ph/0402512). Thus it is easy to understand how the known Ly_alpha 
clouds can exactly describe the supernova brightness anomaly presently
ascribed to dark energy.

5. PROSPOSAL FOR A MODEST RESEARCH EFFORT

All that is needed to complete this research effort is to make a model of a
collapsing hydrogen cloud and its subsequent cooling, and then compute its
refraction properties. This is actually somewhat harder than it first
sounds, because the cooling of the primordial object will involve a complex
superposition of radiative, conductive, convective, sound dissipation,
evaporation, and
other unknown processes. However even if the exact cooling is not perfectly
known an approximate model will suffice to make a basic refraction model.

The theoretical basis has been provided by the hydrodynamics community.
The primordial planetary objects were produced when a strong viscosity
change at the time of recombination caused fossils of earlier turbulence to
collapse as a product of normal particle-void separation. The collapse time
of 10^8 years has been followed by slow cooling for the next 10^10 years.
The objects would in principal have endured important phase changes from
gas to liquid to solid as the universe cooled below the 20K solidification
temperature of hydrogen, to eventually approach the 2.7K temperature of
the present universe. 

Thus the baryonic dark matter primordial planetoids discovered in quasar
microlensing suffered a complex history of phase changes but is seen today
as a population of Ly_alpha clouds of planetary mass permeating all
space and dimming objects at cosmological distances with achromatic
refraction.