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Don't Panic

Universe’s Background Glow Could be Caused by Stars Enshrouded In Darkness. Remind You Of Anything, Hitchhiker’s Fans?

by Rebecca Pahle | 2:45 pm, October 25th, 2012


In a case of life imitating art, scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope have theorized that the universe’s layer of background infrared light could be the result of clouds of dark matter with “orphan” stars in the middle of them them. If one of those stars had a planet the night sky from its surface might be completely dark, like that of the planet Krikkit in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book in Douglas Adams‘ five-book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

If anyone wants to object to The Hitchhiker’s Guide being art, step right up. I’m prepared to fight you on this one.

Though we can’t see into the clouds of dark matter, the light from the hypothetical stars would be able make it out, giving the areas around them a faint infrared glow. Says UCLA’s Edward Wright, “You can’t see the dark matter very well, but we are proposing that it actually has a few stars in it — only one-tenth of 1 percent of the number of stars in the bright part of the galaxy. One star in a thousand gets stripped out of the visible galaxy and gets distributed like the dark matter.”

(Does that make anyone else kind of sad? It’s fitting, really, as most of the books in the Hitchhiker’s trilogy, which I love, have always really depressed me. Why can’t Arthur just have something good that doesn’t get taken away from him?! OK, getting back on track…)

In the Hitchhiker’s trilogy Krikkit was isolated from the rest of the universe by a dust cloud created by the destruction of a massive supercomputer. Its inhabitants had no idea that anything besides their own planet even existed, and their first reaction to finally seeing the splendor of the universe was deciding to destroy all of it. (“It’ll have to go.”) Between this news and last week’s discovery of a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, there have been a lot of things from Hitchhiker’s popping up in the real world lately. I’m kind of nervous. I love the books, but I’d hate to live in them.

(via: The Register)

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  • http://twitter.com/shinobi42 Shinobi

    I tried to watch the most recent Hitchiker’s movie again recently. I know the books so well from listening to the audiobooks over and over that I found myself saying the actually funny lines that were inexplicably removed from the script. It was a sad day.

  • Rebecca Pahle

    It’s a hard book to translate to the screen. You’ve reminded me that I need to listent to the radio show again. It’s been too long.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Brown/100003806213451 Mark Brown

    “One star in a thousand gets stripped out of the visible galaxy and gets distributed like the dark matter.”

    Not sad, but kind of… bittersweet? Is that the right word? “We few, we happy few…”

  • Anonymous

    I can recite a non-trivial portion of the radio drama’s first season from memory.

    This is probably not something I should be proud of, or at least something I should stop doing when given the excuse, according to several of my friends.

  • Anonymous

    Well at least our planet isn’t one of them – we’re too good at being biocidal maniacs as it is without adding in Krikkit-style existential trauma.

    The HH universe *is* bittersweet, our own faults and foibles amplified and twisted to ridiculous proportions for comedy with an underlying knife-edge prodding human pomposities. Its bleak humour isn’t supposed to make you cheer for humanity, but it isn’t solely cynical. I get shivers when I hear the ending of the original radio series playing What a Wonderful World. BTW the original radio cast (mostly) toured UK this Summer with a live stage-radio play. DA’s legacy lives on!

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