The recently observed 244 EeV cosmic ray has created a stir because, coming from direction of the Local Void, it has no obvious source [
1]. As the Telescope Array Collaboration, the discoverers of the particle, correctly pointed out [
10], standard theory of the propagation of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECR) do not allow such particles, be they protons or other nuclei, to travel more than 30 Mpc.
Standard propagation theory, however, assumes that the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) is composed of electromagnetic radiation. The Standard Model of particle physics, confirmed by all experiments to date, states [
5] that electromagnetism is
not a fundamental field, but rather is composed of two fundamental gauge fields
and
. Tipler [
11] has shown that quantum field theory and general relativity require that the universe must begin with only the
field present. Tipler has since argued that if the CBR were still mainly just
, it would provide a natural explanation for the nature of the Dark Matter (it would be an oscillation of the Standard Model Higgs field) and such a Dark Matter would automatically resolve the Hubble Tension [
13]. A CBR composed mainly of an
field would mean that UHECR with energies above the GZK ([
3,
15]) cutoff (50 EeV) could propagate a factor of 150 further through the CBR, since 90% of the cross-section for pion production in the collision between a UHE proton and a CBR photon is due to a quark spin flip, and an
particle cannot generate a quark spin flip. The UHE proton mean-free path with traditional electromagnetic CBR photons would only be 3 Mpc ([
6] p. 340) whereas an
CBR would allow a UHE proton mean-free path of 450 Mpc ([
11], p. 947). It is important to point out that since the energy loss due to pion creation is approximately 10% per event, the UHE protons could potentially come from distances of over 4 Gpc if the CBR is mainly
. For the purposes of this study, however, we restrict ourselves to finding sources near the mean-free path length
ℓ. Even though it is possible for UHE protons to come from distances much greater than the mean free path, this realistic restriction will demonstrate how well this theory can explain the anomalous measurements.
The Telescope Array Collaboration noted that active galaxy PKS 1717+177 was within
of the calculated proton direction, but they dismissed this as a possible source since it is at a redshift z= 0.137. There is a closer source for a proton than PKS 1717+177, namely 2MASX J16574719+1832247, redshift z = 0.054 (= 230 Mpc with
km/s-Mpc), a Linear-Type located AGN located
from the proton arrival direction. If the CBR is
rather then electromagnetic, then both of these are possible sources for the 244 EeV particle to be a proton. We have earlier suggested the AGN MCG +08.11.011, with a redshift of 0.020, and located
from the observed direction, as the source of 320 EeV “Oh My God” particle [
14], in the same paper that we suggested sources for all unidentified Pierre Auger UHECR.. D. W. Piasecki [
7] has given the likely sources of all the unidentified northern hemisphere UHECR.
The Bayes Factor
K comparing two theories
and
is defined to be the ratio
, where
is the probability of the data given the theory
. Let
be the theory that the CBR is mainly an
, and
is the conventional theory that the CBR is composed of photons. Then since the Beer-Lambert Law says the probability that a particle will propagate a distance
x from the source is
, we have
, where x = 230 Mpc, and we bias in favor of
by choosing the obvious
Mpc, and
Mpc (1
ℓ for
and 10
ℓ for
), we get K = 490 (unbiased gives
). Jeffreys claims ([
4], p. 396)
is “decisive” evidence in favor of
against
.
If the CBR is missing the
field, it could couple only to electrons with left-handed helicity (this the meaning of the subscript “L” in
), the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect would be half of the value predicted by standard CBR theory ([
11], pp. 949-950). This has been observed by both WMAP [
2] and by PLANCK ([
8,
9]). Finally, the
nature of the CBR has now been observed directly in experiment [
12]. UHECR researchers should take these facts into account.
References
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