The Transparency of the Universe Limited by Ly-alpha Clouds

Abstract

The brightnesses of supernovae are commonly understood to indicate that cosmological expansion is accelerating due to dark energy. However the entire discussion presumes a perfectly transparent universe because no effects of reddening associated with the interstellar extinction law are seen. We note that with two kinds of dark matter (baryonic and non-baryonic) strongly dominating the known mass of the universe, it is seriously premature to assume that these dark matter components have not reduced the transmission of the universe for cosmological sources. We show that the long-known $Lyman-\alpha$ clouds, if nucleated by the population of baryonic dark matter primordial planetoids indicated by quasar microlensing, would act as spherical lenses and achromatically fade cosmologically distant sources. We attempt to estimate the amount of this cosmological fading, but ultimately the calculation is limited by lack of a satisfactory model for the tenuous outer parts of a primordial planetoid. We also consider the effects of such cosmological fading on the light of quasars.