Sounding Rocket Sheds New Light On Surprising Cosmic Glow

Image Caption: This is a time-lapse photograph of the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) rocket launch, taken from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in 2013. The image is from the last of four launches. Credit: T. Arai/University of Tokyo

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

An experiment designed by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and carried into space on a NASA sounding rocket has detected a diffuse cosmic glow that appears to represent more infrared light than is produced by the known galaxies in the universe, officials at the US space agency announced on Thursday.

The researchers detected the surplus of infrared light in the dark space between galaxies, and they believe that the glow is from orphaned stars that had been ejected from galaxies. Furthermore, the Caltech researchers, who reported their findings in the journal Science, could redefine the scientific definition of a galaxy to indicate that they do not have set boundaries but are vast and interconnected.

The observations were obtained from NASAs Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) rocket, and according to the agency, they are helping to settle an ongoing debate about whether this background infrared light (which had previously been detected by the Spitzer Space Telescope) originated from streams of far-flung stars that are too distant to be observed individually, or if it comes from the first galaxies to form in the universe.

[ Watch the Video: NASA Rocket Experiment Finds Flood Of Cosmic Light ]

In the new study, Caltech physics professor Jamie Bock, senior postdoctoral fellow Michael Zemcov and their colleagues report that the best explanation is that the cosmic light came from stars that had been ejected from their parent galaxies and flung out into space as those galaxies collided and merged with other galaxies. These previously undetected stars could actually reside in what was thought to be dark spaces between galaxies, they added.

We think stars are being scattered out into space during galaxy collisions, Zemcov, lead author of the study and an astronomer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. While we have previously observed cases where stars are flung from galaxies in a tidal stream, our new measurement implies this process is widespread.

Image Above: This graphic illustrates how CIBER team measures a diffuse glow of infrared light filling the spaces between galaxies. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Sounding Rocket Sheds New Light On Surprising Cosmic Glow