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A group of astronomers has found a ghostly glow in the solar system, which represents a new addition to its structure, but the source remains a mystery.
According to the British Daily Mail, the discovery was made when astronomers set out to see how dark space could be, which they did by sifting through 200,000 images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, eliminating the expected glow, but a tiny excess of light prevailed.
Scientists cannot be sure of the source of the light, but assume that the source is a previously unknown ball of dust from comets, which reflects sunlight.
If confirmed, the researchers said, this dust envelope would be a new addition to the known architecture of the solar system.
The discovery builds on research conducted in 2021 when another group of astronomers used data from NASA’s New Horizons interplanetary space probe to measure the background sky.
New Horizons also detected a flare around the solar system, but the probe was more than 4 billion miles from the sun, and what caused it remains a mystery to this day.
NASA probe
Many theories range from the decay of dark matter, to an unseen multitude of distant galaxies.
Tim Carlton of Arizona State University (ASU) said in a statement: If our analysis is correct, then there is another dust element between us, and the distance that New Horizons made the measurements, and this means that this is some kind of additional light that comes from within our solar system.
Carlton went on to explain that since the light appeared dim in the New Horizons data due to its distance, the glow must have come from within the confines of the solar system.
And he continued: It may be a new element for the contents of the solar system that has been hypothesized, but has not been quantified yet.
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