Abstract:

¶    Baryonic dark matter (DM) in the present epoch may be possible in the context of 2 earlier epochs of baryonic DM that altered the physics of Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), and altered physics of photon decoupling at early-onset hydrogen recombination.

1st epoch) Neutron DM:
The hadron epoch fused charged quarks into baryons, decoupling neutrons from the primordial photons, resulting in gravitational collapse of neutrons into neutron collapse centers that were cored with direct-collapse super massive black holes (DC SMBHs). BBN fused neutral neutrons to protons to form positively-charged helium nuclei, resulting in electrostatic rebound of neutron collapse centers in the form of twin-binary pairs of proto-spiral galaxies, rebounding from one another.

2nd epoch) Helium DM:
Second helium recombination decoupled helium from the primordial photons, resulting in gravitational collapse of helium into helium collapse centers that evolved into proto-dwarf spheroidal galaxies (proto-dSphs).

3rd epoch) Planetary-mass gas-globule DM (paleons):
Some Population (Pop) III stars in helium collapse centers exited the main sequence as thermally-pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) stars that ejected a portion of their mass in coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that took the form of of self-gravitating planetary-mass gas globules, designated ‘paleons’. Paleons accreted the remaining gas in the helium collapse centers, with some paleons reaching a Jeans mass, resulting in gravitational collapse to form Pop II stars. Gas mop up by paleons with minimal collapse into Pop II stars, converted gaseous helium collapse centers into DM-dominated dSphs, devoid of loose gas and dust.

Neutron DM at BBN:
¶    The first epoch of baryonic DM began in the lepton epoch. At about 1 second after the Big Bang, neutral neutrons decoupled from primordial neutrinos, after having decoupled from primordial photons in the hadron epoch. With the emergence of decoupled neutron DM, neutrons underwent gravitational collapse at the prevailing Jeans mass scale,to form super massive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galactic-scale neutron collapse centers.
¶    Beginning about 10 seconds after the Big Bang, BBN began fusing neutral neutrons with protons into positively-charged deuterium and then helium, causing electrostatic rebound of the neutron collapse centers. The gravitational cohesion in rebounding collapse centers minimized the rebounding surface area into a bilateral dumbbell shape, stretching rebounding collapse centers into twin-binary proto-spiral galaxies repelled in opposite directions, with opposing angular momentum vectors.

Helium DM at second-helium recombination:
¶    The second epoch of baryonic DM occurred at second helium recombination, which decoupled neutral helium from the primordial photons, resulting in a second round of gravitational fragmentation at a suggested ~ 10⁸ M☉ Jeans mass scale. This time, gravitational collapse was accompanied by the outward diffusion of primordial photons, and the diffusive loss of primordial photons allowed ionized hydrogen to collapse as well. Gravitational collapse accelerated the expansion rate in the relative voids between collapse centers, causing early-onset hydrogen recombination when the global baryon density was about 6 times that of canonical hydrogen recombination, at z ≈ 2000 from the ΛCDM perspective, with 5/6 of the baryons sequestered in helium collapse centers.
¶    The electron gas cooled the primordial photons by Compton scattering as they diffused out of the warm collapse centers, with the photons retaining a a slight temperature differential above that of the electron gas, such that at photon decoupling, the primordial photons were slightly warm compared to canonical ΛCDM theory. Warm primordial photons slightly increased the effective redshift of photon decoupling, with photon decoupling presumably occurring around z ≈ 1200, compared to z = 1100 for canonical (ΛCDM) recombination. A slightly-elevated redshift at photon decoupling results in an elevated Hubble constant, which may resolve the Hubble tension in favor of the distance ladder measured by Ia supernovae.

Paleon DM from Pop III stars:
¶    The gravitational collapse of helium and ionized hydrogen within helium collapse centers ended with the formation of Population (Pop) III stars, some of which presumably evolved along the asymptotic giant branch, ejecting planetary-mass cometary knots in coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These cometary knots (‘paleons’) were presumably self gravitating gas globules, with a strong affinity for gas accretion across their large AU-scale diameters. These Pop III star paleons are suggested to be the reservoirs of baryonic DM today.
¶    Pop III stars needn’t have been particularly efficient at spawning paleons in planetary nebulae if the resulting paleons were particularly efficient at accreting loose gas within the gravitational wells of their helium collapse centers. Mars-mass cometary knots may have swelled into Earth-mass paleons or larger in the process of mopping up the loose gas. And the tiny minority of paleons that swelled to a Jeans mass, collapsed to form Pop II stars. The mopping up of loose gas by paleons, along with a minimal spawning of Pop II stars, transformed transformed gaseous helium collapse centers into DM-dominated dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs).
¶    Gas-globule paleons gradually went dark to become the DM reservoirs of the present epoch as their stellar metallicity ’snowed out’ and accreted by sedimentation into moon-mass icy nuclei at their centers of mass. Paleons may regulate their temperature with trace concentrations of gaseous carbon monoxide that radiates away the incident energy of cosmic rays across their large surface areas.
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Introduction:

¶    The rotation rates of spiral galaxy disks require much-greater cohesive force than the gravity of the visible matter produces, resulting in the hypothesis of an invisible halo of DM. ΛCDM theory assumes the invisible DM is in the form of exotic particles of unspecified nature that may only weakly interact with luminous baryonic matter, but so far, all attempts to detect exotic DM particles have failed.
¶    Canonical BBN under homogenous conditions excludes baryonic DM, since baryonic DM implies a 6-fold increased baryon-to-photon ratio that would skew BBN reaction products well beyond observed error margins, particularly the primordial deuterium/hydrogen (D/H) ratio. Alternatively, inhomogeneous conditions in the context of neutron collapse centers during BBN require a reappraisal of BBN in the context of varying proton-to-neutron ratios, varying baryon-to-photon ratios, and particularly for accelerated cosmic expansion rates due to neutron collapse.
¶    Similarly, canonical hydrogen recombination under homogenous conditions excludes baryonic DM, unless the baryonic matter were already dark or otherwise sequestered from hydrogen decoupling. The black-body temperature at photon decoupling divided by the black-body temperature of the CMB today telegraphs the degree of redshift (cosmic expansion) since then, which agrees quite well with the observed baryon density in today’s universe, within the precision of the ‘missing baryon problem’. Alternatively, the gravitational collapse of helium is suggested to have sequestered 5/6 of all hydrogen in collapse centers from early-onset hydrogen recombination in the relative voids between helium collapse centers, where the primordial photons diffused out of the collapse centers to participate in early-onset photon decoupling.

¶    The most intuitive DM candidate is baryonic matter composed of primordial concentrations of hydrogen and helium that has become cloaked by some mechanism, and baryonic DM needn’t be completely dark in a universe filled with luminous baryonic matter in numerous states, concentrations and configurations that may not be fully characterized. Condensed matter objects, such as black holes, neutron stars, black dwarfs, brown dwarfs and rogue gas-giant planets have been effectively ruled out as DM candidates by microlensing studies, leaving cold, self-gravitating gas globules as perhaps the final unexcluded baryonic DM reservoirs. Cold, dense molecular hydrogen is difficult to detect (Pfenniger and Combes 1994; Pfenniger, Combes and Martinet 1994), if its stellar metallicity proxy is sequestered into moon-mass nuclei by sedimentation.

¶    One means of detecting gas globules could be scintillation of pinpoint radio sources such as quasars and pulsars, when their outer sheaths have been partially ionized by nearby hot stars. Quasar scintillation caused by high electron density plasma has been detected for years, but only very recently has this scintillation been tied to hot A stars with copious UV radiation (Walker et al., 2017). Manly Astrophysics suggests the scintillation may be caused by as many as 100,000 self-gravitating gas globules that became gravitationally bound to their host stars at stellar formation.
¶    Alternatively, it is suggested here that quasar scintillation associated with hot stars is caused by hot star CMEs, rather than by primordial gas globules. If quasar scintillation has not detected primordial paleons, then there appears to be no more evidence for baryonic DM than there is for exotic DM; however, quasar scintillation by ionization of hot variable star CMEs is suggested to be a diminutive form of planetary-mass cometary knots ejected from thermally-pulsing AGB (TP-AGB) stars in planetary nebulae today, with the Helix nebula as its best example, and cometary knots in planetary nebulae are suggested to be modern analogs of paleon ejection by CME from Population III stars that similarly expired as TP-AGB stars. The connection between solar CMEs from our Sun and planetary-mass cometary knots in planetary nebulae (PNe) is some 12 orders of magnitude in mass, with suggested quasar scintillation of hot-star CMEs lying somewhere in between.

¶    In planetary-mass self-gravitating gas globules less than a Jeans mass, the sound-crossing time is shorter than the freefall time, such that densifications are quickly erased by acoustic rebound, and because of the rapid falloff of the inverse square law of gravitation in the context of AU-scale hydrostatic gas globules, there is no appreciable increase in density toward the center of mass. Near uniformity of density is a requirement for invisibility, since a globule with a steep radial density gradient would act as an optical lens, causing noticeable microlensing events.
¶    Condensed stellar metallicity in the form of dust and ice crystals, however, is subject to sedimentation, and therefore falls to the center of mass where it presumably concentrates to form moon-mass icy nuclei. And a moon-mass icy nuclei would compress the overlying gas into a dense amosphere that would assist in reaching the dew point of highly-volatile gaseous metallicity, primarily carbon monoxide.

¶    The missing satellite problem and the too big to fail problem of bottom-up hierarchical-accretion ΛCDM theory is alternatively explained by the top-down gravitational collapse of baryonic DM, with proto-spiral galaxy formation during BBN, and sub-halo formation at second-helium recombination, followed by the appearance of gas-globule DM following the dark ages, converting helium-collapse-center sub-haloes to DM-dominated dSphs.

¶    The discovery of quasars of more than a billion M☉ formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang is problematic for hierarchical-accretion of stellar-mass black holes. It also strains credibility for direct collapse formation of intermediate-mass black holes, from atomic hydrogen clouds with a Jeans mass of ~ 10⁵ M☉ (Basu and Das, 2019), followed by super-Eddington accretion, since this alternative implies the existence of many other intermediate-mass black holes that aren’t observed. Alternatively, direct collapse formation of billion M☉ SMBHs during BBN requires no super-Eddington accretion and forms no unobserved intermediate-mass black holes.
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Gravitational collapse of neutron DM following the hadron epoch:

¶    The fusion of charged quarks into hadrons concluded by about 1 second after the Big Bang.
Neutrino decoupling also occurred at about 1 second after the Big Bang, leaving fully-decoupled neutrons free to undergo gravitational collapse at the prevailing Jeans mass. Neutrons were prevented from fusing directly into helium-4 until cosmic expansion had lowered the ambient temperature to about 0.1 Mev, where the more-fragile deuterium precursor could survive. The first 225 seconds after the Big Bang were known as the ‘deuterium bottleneck’, when primordial photons were still sufficiently energetic to dissociate protons and neutrons as fast as they fused together. Thus, decoupled neutrons were free to undergo gravitational collapse for about the first 225 seconds after the Big Bang, after which the free neutron concentration dropped precipitously. Neutrons still felt the residual strong force, but the residual strong force drops to near zero beyond 2.5 femtometer.

¶    Protons and electrons-positrons continued their cosmic expansion as neutrons collapsed, but the gravitational wells of neutron collapse centers altered the local plasma expansion rates, reducing cosmic expansion in the neutron collapse centers and increasing expansion rates in the relative voids in between. This elevated cosmic expansion rate in the cooler relative voids reduced the BBN duration and likely caused local early-onset BBN. Concomitantly, neutron collapse retarded cosmic expansion in warmer collapse centers, reducing BBN duration and likely causing local delayed-onset BBN.

¶    The question of fragmentation during the gravitational collapse of neutrons is unanswered, since the prevailing conditions for fragmentation were borderline at the time. The adiabatic index of the relativistic gas of the early universe was 4/3, and in gas with an adiabatic index of < 4/3, the Jeans mass decreases with increasing density, promoting fragmentation during gravitational collapse; however, the wide size range of spiral galaxies suggests that fragmentation may have taken place unevenly. In any case, the gravitational collapse of neutrons is suggested here to have culminated in the formation of direct-collapse super massive black holes (SMBHs).

Homogeneous canonical (ΛCDM) BBN:
¶    At about 1 second after the Big Bang the temperature dropped below the neutron-proton mass difference, freezing in the neutron:proton ratio at about 1:6. But neutrons have a half life of 615 seconds, such that the neutron:proton ratio dropped to about 1:7 by about 225 seconds after the Big Bang, when the temperature dropped below the binding energy of deuterium (.1 MeV) at a temperature of about 1 billion K, or kT = 0.1 MeV. Helium-4 has a much higher binding energy (28 MeV), but its formation was forestalled by this ‘deuterium bottleneck’. Additional nuclear reactions made tritium, helium-3 and lithium-7. The residual deuterium, helium-3, helium-4 and lithium-7 abundances today depend on one single parameter, expressed either as the baryon-to-photon ratio or as the baryon density. (astro.ucla.edu Big Bang Nucleosynthesis)
¶    The primordial deuterium (D) concentration is often expressed as the ratio of primordial D to hydrogen (H), which has been determined to be, D/H = 2.527+/- 0.030 x10^-5 (Cooke et al, 2018)
¶    Canonical predictions for primordial lithium-7 are high by a factor of about 3, however, leaving the door ajar for alternative theories.

Inhomogeneous BBN in the context of neutron collapse:
¶    Neutron collapse created inhomogeneous conditions that changed the course of BBN, compared to the canonical homogenous conditions of ΛCDM theory by altering the following parameters.
¶    1) Proton-to-neutron gradients: Neutrons underwent local gravitational collapse, while protons continued their cosmic expansion, creating steep local proton-to-neutron ratios.
¶    2) Baryon-to-photon gradients: The steep density and temperature gradients of the era caused photons to diffuse outward from the collapse centers, but with the high densities and short time intervals of the era, photons effectively moved in lockstep with the local expansion rate of the plasma, creating a uniform proton-to-photon ratio across neutron collapse centers. The baryon-to-photon ratio, however, varied across collapse centers due to neutron collapse. And residual primordial deuterium concentrations from BBN are particularly sensitive to the baryon-to-photon ratio.
¶    3) Expansion-rate gradients: The gravitational wells of neutron-collapse-centers affected the local cosmic expansion rates, reducing expansion in the warmer collapse centers, while increasing expansion in the cooler surrounding relative voids. Thus BBN was accelerated in the relative voids while being retarded in the densified collapse centers, with local expansion rates affecting the local BBN reaction products.
¶    4) Neutron-decay gradients: Free neutrons have a half life of 615 seconds, decaying into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. Thus anything that affected the onset and duration of BBN affected the neutron-to-proton ratio compared to canonical BBN.
¶    Neutron collapse at BBN may create the possibility for baryonic DM today, by altering the local conditions during primordial nucleosynthesis, despite the circa 6 fold increase in the baryon-to-photon ratio required for a baryonic DM theory. Neutron collapse implies locally-varying neutron-to-proton ratios and locally-varying expansion rates in the context of a globally-elevated baryon-to-photon ratio. Neutron collapse implies elevated cosmic expansion rates in the rarified relative voids between neutron collapse centers, accompanied by depressed cosmic expansion rates in the densified collapse centers themselves; however, elastic rebound of neutron collapse centers as neutron fusion ran to completion likely also created elevated cosmic expansion rates within collapse centers at the tail end of neutron fusion.
¶    Elevated expansion rates resulting from neutron collapse should increase the concentration of unreacted deuterium by accelerated quenching of BBN. Thus elevated expansion rates at the end of BBN may have largely offset the effect of an elevated baryon-to-photon ratio required by baryonic DM, perhaps, fortuitously creating a D/H ratio very similar to the canonical ratio predicted by ΛCDM theory.

¶    Neutron enrichment in neutron collapse centers should result in helium enrichment in rebounded (proto)spiral galaxies, where neutron enrichment/depletion converted to helium enrichment/depletion during BBN. The greatest helium enrichment should be in the central galactic bulge and its associated bulge globular clusters, with with diminishing helium enrichment in globular clusters at greater radial distances.
¶    Globular clusters generally contain multiple populations of Pop II stars, often with one population being substantially helium enriched. Curiously, the unenriched stellar populations in globular clusters aren’t helium depleted, but instead contain canonical helium concentrations, such that averaging the helium concentrations among the multiple populations results in substantial helium enrichment in some globular clusters, with more modest helium enrichment in other globular clusters. The Sun is a relatively-high metallicity Pop I star, which has a helium mass fraction of Y = 0.2485, compared to the primordial value of Y = 0.247. By comparison, helium-enriched populations of low-metallicity Pop II stars in globular clusters can reach a helium mass fraction as high as Y = 0.4. (Fare et al., 2018)
¶    Another study finds a discrepancy between spectroscopic and photometric age determination for Galactic bulge stars that can be explained by helium enhancement relative to standard isochrones, suggesting an upper bound on helium enrichment for metal-rich stars of ∆Y ≈ +0.11
(Najaf and Gould, 2012), which, compared to the solar ∆Y = 0.2485 – 0.247 = 0.0015, is high indeed.
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Neutron-collapse-center rebound, forming proto-spiral galaxies in twin-binary pairs:

¶    Only neutral neutrons collapsed, with protons continuing to expand, with expansion driven by the primordial photons in this radiation-dominated era. Neutron collapse was transitory, however, with BBN fusing neutral neutrons into positively-charged deuterium by about 225 seconds after the Big Bang. Thus, very quickly, neutron collapse reversed into elastic rebound, driven by the primordial photons. Even where gravitational collapse elevated the temperature above the binding energy of deuterium, the relatively-short half life of neutrons reversed neutron collapse anyway.
¶    The gravitational collapse of neutrons and subsequent rebound was adiabatic to the extent that the potential energy in collapse centers converted to heat was expended in expansive rebound cooling when climbing out of their collapse-center gravitational wells; however, the cohesive force of gravity likely broke the radial symmetry of collapse, causing asymmetrical rebound. The collapse-center Roche spheres were presumably distorted into dumbbell shapes during elastic rebound, which minimized the rebounding surface area, such that part of the heat energy in collapse centers was expended in repelling twin-binary masses in opposite directions, splitting solitary collapse-center Roche spheres into twin-binary Roche spheres repelled in opposing directions. And the energy expended in binary-fission with linear rebound robbed the bifurcated rebounding components (proto-galaxies) of sufficient heat energy to expand out of their gravity wells, causing rebounding proto-galaxies to remain permanently gravitationally bound.
¶    Neutron collapse centers contained solitary SMBHs that could not be divided in binary-fission rebound, such that only one rebounding proto-galaxy acquired the SMBH, while its twin-binary sibling acquired only ionized hydrogen and helium. And this asymmetry in the discrete apportionment of SMBHs may be partly responsible for creating specific angular momentum in rebounding masses, resulting in twin-binary proto-spiral galaxies with opposing angular momentum vectors repelled in opposite directions, imbuing spiral galaxies with their characteristic specific angular momentum. Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way Galaxy are suggested here to have formed as a rebounding twin-binary pair, where Andromeda acquired the primordial SMBH, accounting for the mass discrepancy of their SMBHs, with Andromeda having a (1.1-2.3) × 10⁸ M☉ SMBH, compared to the much-smaller 4 x 10⁶ M☉ SMBH at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

¶    An accelerated expansion rate during neutron collapse center rebound may have stranded higher than canonical concentrations of deuterium in bifurcated proto-spiral galaxies, when the accelerated cooling dropped below the fusion temperature of deuterium.
¶    An enhanced deuterium fraction in the Galaxy might be explained by a steady rate of infall of low-metallicity gas from the halo; however, an enhanced deuterium fraction and local Galactic chemical evolution (stellar metallicity) are incompatible with simple mixing of halo gas and disk gas. In order to have both an elevated D/H ratio and elevated stellar metallicity requires “infall” from the halo and “wind” from Galactic bulge, where the Galactic bulge wind is entrained with heavy elements. (Tsujimoto, 2010)
¶    Alternatively, an elevated concentration of primordial deuterium in Galaxies might explain both elevated deuterium and elevated metallicity in the context of local Galactic chemical evolution without remote input, where an elevated concentration of galactic primordial deuterium may be the result of an accelerated expansion rate during neutron collapse center rebound.
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Gravitational collapse of decoupled helium at second-helium recombination, causing early-onset photon decoupling:

¶    Canonical hydrogen recombination under homogenous conditions apparently precludes the possibility of baryonic DM; however, sufficient inhomogeneity to cause early-onset hydrogen recombination when the baryonic density was 6 times that at canonical hydrogen recombination may offer a possibility for baryonic DM today.

¶    The black-body CMB temperature today telegraphs the degree of redshift since hydrogen recombination, and the observed baryon density today agrees rather well with canonical ΛCDM theory to the extent of the ‘missing baryon problem’, where unobserved baryons predicted by ΛCDM theory are presumed to reside in the warm-hot intergalactic medium.
¶    Alternatively, there appear to be 2 possibilities that may allow for baryonic DM;
1) if 5/6 of baryonic matter were already dark and thus did not participate in hydrogen recombination, or
2) if the universe were sufficiently inhomogeneous that early-onset recombination could occur at the cold low-density extremes when the baryon density was 6 times the canonical hydrogen recombination density.
¶    Surprisingly, these seemingly mutually-contradictory possibilities may be alternative descriptions of the same process, with the realization that locally canonical conditions within globally inhomogeneous conditions might permit early-onset global photon decoupling.

¶    At second-helium recombination, neutral helium was decoupled from primordial photons, making neutral helium susceptible to gravitational collapse, whereas protons and electrons continued their cosmic expansion, driven by the radiation pressure of primordial photons. Helium was not completely dark, however, since neutral helium still experienced gas pressure due to physical collisions with protons and electrons. Presumably, however, the modest gas pressure of the era was insufficient to enforce complete mixing of helium with plasma, allowing helium to drift with respect to the gravitational potentials of local Jeans masses.
¶    Helium collapsed at the prevailing Jeans mass scale, which is suggested to be ~ 10⁸ M☉. Collapsing helium warmed the collapse centers, and the mass concentration also gravitationally compressed the plasma within collapse centers. The resulting temperature and pressure gradient across helium collapse centers caused primordial photons to diffuse outward, and as the photons diffused away, ionized hydrogen was able to collapse as well. The resulting runaway collapse of ionized hydrogen and neutral helium in helium collapse centers caused accelerated expansion in the rarified relative voids between collapse centers, accompanied by accelerated cooling. And accelerated expansive cooling in the relative voids presumably caused early-onset hydrogen recombination where the local conditions were canonical for hydrogen recombination, when the global baryonic density was about 6 times that of canonical (ΛCDM) hydrogen recombination. Thus, sequestration of 5/6 of all baryons within the Roche spheres of helium collapse centers, accompanied by the diffusion of primordial photons out of collapse centers, allowed local early-onset hydrogen recombination to cause global photon decoupling.

¶    For DM to be baryonic, early-onset photon decoupling had to occur when the baryonic density was about 6 times that of canonical hydrogen recombination, when the volume of the universe was 6 times smaller, the diameter was 6^(1/3) times smaller, and the redshift was 6^(1/3) times higher. Thus if canonical recombination occurred at z = 1100, then early-onset hydrogen recombination must have occurred when the redshift was about 1100 * 6^(1/3) ≈ 2000 from the ΛCDM perspective, and significantly, second-helium recombination occurred from z ≈ 1600−3500 (Beradze and Gogberashvili, 2020), from the ΛCDM perspective, where matter-radiation equality occurred at z ≈ 3400, also from the ΛCDM perspective. The physics of recombination dictates that hydrogen recombination actually occurred around z = 1100, given the black body temperature of the CMB today, regardless of whether hydrogen recombination was canonical or whether it was early-onset, with 5/6 of all baryons sequestered into helium collapse centers. Early-onset hydrogen recombination/photon decoupling suggests that the universe was considerably younger than according to canonical recombination/photon decoupling by a factor of about 6^(1/3). Thus if canonical photon decoupling occurred about 378,000 years after the Big Bang, then early-onset photon decoupling occurred at about 378,000/6^(1/3) ≈ 200,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe was about 1/6 the volume of canonical photon decoupling.
¶    From a global perspective, canonical and early-onset hydrogen recombination occurred under very different conditions; however, from the local perspective of the relative voids between helium collapse centers, the conditions were very-nearly canonical, down to the baryon-to-photon ratio, with a small positive temperature disparity of the primordial photons at photon decoupling, discussed in the following section that addresses the ~ 9% tension in the Hubble constant.

¶    Helium collapse centers differed from the earlier epoch of neutron collapse in that the helium collapse centers did not experience elastic rebound. BBN was a primary process, consuming every free neutron by nuclear fusion or radioactive decay, with no possibility of mass sequestration from BBN, although BBN conditions varied across neutron collapse centers. By comparison, photon decoupling was a secondary process that accommodated mass sequestration, by way of photon diffusion out of helium collapse centers. Photon diffusion also occurred in neutron collapse centers, but the larger Jeans mass and the vastly-shorter time interval made the era essentially adiabatic with regard to photon diffusion, although not adiabatic with regard to neutron collapse, where drifting neutrons created relatively-shallow baryon-to-photon gradients.

¶    The second and third peaks of the CMB power spectrum indicate the relative percentages of luminous matter to dark matter, with about 4.9% luminous matter, 26.8% dark matter, and the balance in the form of dark energy. This ratio presumably represents the relative percentage of baryonic matter sequestered within the Roche spheres of helium collapse centers, which included collapsing ionized hydrogen.
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Tension in the Hubble constant, telegraphing photon decoupling at z ≈ 1200:

¶    Compton scattering cooled the primordial photons as they diffused out of the warm collapse centers, but the Comptonization time frame was presumably not short enough to cool the photons to equilibrium, such the photons were slightly warmer than the surrounding electron plasma at photon decoupling. Thus, localized early-onset hydrogen recombination is suggested here to have decoupled slightly-warm primordial photons, compared to the homogenous conditions predicted by ΛCDM theory at canonical hydrogen recombination.

¶    Slightly warm primordial photons at photon decoupling makes for a slightly-elevated redshift at photon decoupling, compared to canonical redshift under canonical conditions predicated by ΛCDM theory. A slightly-elevated redshift of photon decoupling translates to a slightly-elevated Hubble constant (H0), assuming the age of the universe remains nearly canonical. This suggestion argues in favor of the measured value for the Hubble constant based on the Cepheid variable and Ia supernova distance ladder, and argues against a ~ 9% lower value derived by the ΛCDM theory concordance model, derived from early universe evidence.

¶    ΛCDM theory presumes homogenous conditions below the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale, where complexity only arose following hydrogen recombination. These homogenous conditions are most-accurately calibrated by the ESA Planck satellite, establishing the present age of the Universe as 13.8 ± 0.02 billion years and today’s Hubble constant of H0=67.4 ± 0.5 km s1 Mpc-1 (Adam G. Riess, 2019).
¶    A baryonic DM alternative, assuming 3 epochs of baryonic DM, pushes complexity back to the first seconds after the Big Bang, with galaxy-scale complexity arising from two successive epochs of universal gravitational fragmentation of the plasma continuum.

¶    The alternative to a model-dependent early-universe determination of the Hubble constant is its actual measurement by a distance ladder. Cepheid variables and Ia supernovae are extremely-bright and exceedingly-bright standard candles that can determine the distances to galaxies out to 40 Mpc, which along with their measured redshift allows a straight forward calculation of the Hubble constant. This distance ladder is most-accurately calculated by the SH0ES (Supernovae H0 for the Equation of State) project to be H0=73.5 ±1.4 km s-1 Mpc-1, which is in 4.2σ tension with the early universe prediction (Adam G. Riess, 2019).

¶    The redshift of hydrogen recombination represents the ratio between the black body temperature at hydrogen recombination (3000 K) and the black body temperature of the CMB today (2.725 K), where z = 3000/2.725 = 1100. But if the primordial photons were slightly warmer than the surrounding plasma at photon decoupling due to photon diffusion out of warm helium collapse centers, then the redshift would be slightly higher, relieving the ~ 9% Hubble tension. A 9% increase in redshift above canonical, relieving the Hubble tension, suggests that the actual redshift of photon decoupling was z = 1.09(3000/2.725) ≈ 1200.
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Emergence of baryonic DM following the Dark Ages:

¶    The gravitational collapse of decoupled helium at second helium recombination is suggested here to have evolved into the DM-dominated dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) of today.
¶    DSphs appear to be one of the absolutes of cosmology, exhibiting a typical mass range of 10⁷-10⁸ M☉. This circumscribed mass range along with their primitive DM-dominated composition suggests the Jeans mass fragmentation scale following second helium recombination.

¶    With early-onset hydrogen recombination occurring during second helium recombination, at z ≈ 1200, the outward diffusion of primordial photons allowed ionized hydrogen to participate in gravitational collapse along with neutral helium. Helium collapse centers may have collapsed down to a 1-10 pc scale before gravitationally fragmenting into dense cores that precipitated Population III stars.
¶    A significant number of Pop III stars presumably evolved along the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) to end their lives in planetary nebulae, ejecting a sizable portion of their mass as self-gravitating (hydrostatic) planetary-mass gas globules, ‘paleons’, presumably by coronal mass ejection (CME) during the terminal thermally-pulsing AGB phase (TP-AGB phase). Planetary-mass cometary knots (CKs) in planetary nebulae today are suggested to be the modern analogs of primordial paleons, with the Helix nebula as the best example.
¶    Paleons have large diameters compared to condensed objects like stars, with their scale measured in astronomical units, and these large cross sections presumably allow them to efficiently accrete loose gas, particularly within the high gas density of gravitationally-bound helium collapse centers. CKs in the Helix nebula are estimated to have 60-200 AU diameters (O’Dell and Handron, 1996), although CKs have presumably not reached a quiescent state in their 6,500 year old infancy in the Helix nebula within the ionized bubble of their degenerate white-dwarf host star, while buffeted by high-velocity stellar wind and irradiated by intense X-rays from the emergent white dwarf.

¶    If the Helix nebula is a modern analog of a primordial Pop III star, with modern CKs as modern analogs of primordial paleons, then it would seem that almost all hydrogen and helium would have had to be processed through Pop III stars that expired in planetary nebula to come anywhere near converting 5/6 of all baryonic matter into DM paleons; however, processing all baryonic matter through Pop III stars is contraindicated by the relative absence of degenerate Pop III stars, in the form of white dwarfs (now black dwarfs) that should have been detected in MACHO microlensing studies. Instead, Pop III star formation efficiency could have been low, with only a moderate number of Pop III stars ending in planetary nebulae, if the resulting paleons were particularly efficient at accreting loose gas, likely bulking up by factors of 100 or more. Indeed, these self-gravitating gas globules within helium collapse centers were presumably so efficient at accreting loose gas within the gravitational wells of helium collapse centers that some exceeded a Jeans mass, promoting gravitational collapse to form Pop II stars.

¶    Condensed stellar metallicity in the form of dust and ice is not hydrostatically supported and thus would experience sedimentation, falling to the center of mass to ultimately accrete into moon-mass central nuclei.
¶    Although the paleons must be nearly uniform in gas density so as not to cause noticeable microlensing, their moon-mass central nuclei must have high-density atmospheres, compressed by their gravity and maintained by the surrounding globule gas. And high-density atmospheres over moon-mass nuclei would be particularly effective at reaching the dew point of stellar-metallicity volatiles such as carbon monoxide (CO), causing volatiles to ‘snow out’, thus helping to wring volatile metallicity from gaseous paleons. Dust can be effective at adsorbing volatiles in protoplanetary disks, but if dust uniformly underwent sedimentation in paleons, then paleons must rely on the partial pressure of volatiles reaching the dew point in the high-density atmospheres over moon-mass nuclei.

¶    Modern CKs may be self-gravitating gas globules that progressively go dark as their stellar metallicity snows out and undergoes sedimentation, and CK accretion may form kilometer-scale comets before ultimately coalescing into solitary moon-mass central nuclei. Moon-mass central nuclei should be the most common condensed objects in the universe in their size range, far outstripping the total number of planets, moons and minor planets in all the star systems in all the galaxies. And escaped paleon and CK comets that ultimately coalesce into icy nuclei may be a significant source of interstellar comets.
¶    Modern CKs are born with escape velocity from their degenerate, white-dwarf stellar cores, and CKs are very likely also born with escape velocity from their formational star clusters as well, since most modern star clusters are typically much-less massive than their primordial helium collapse centers. If modern CKs have not had the opportunity to engorge on gas within their natal nebulae, then one would expect escaped CKs to be much-much less massive than their primordial counterparts, and being less massive, modern CKs would be more subject to evaporative dissipation. But even if modern CKs are long lived and even if their total numbers are significant, they would still contribute very little to baryonic DM due to their diminutive formational masses, unenhanced by gas accretion within their natal nebulae.

Temperature regulation of paleons:
¶    The energy absorbed by incident cosmic rays across the large AU-scale surface areas of paleons presumably requires residual concentrations of gaseous stellar metallicity, likely in the form of gaseous CO, to radiate away this thermal energy in order to clamp paleon temperatures below ~ 100 K. Above about 100 K, molecular hydrogen becomes visible in the infrared spectrum, by way of pure-rotational radiation of para-H2 (J = 2 → 1), such that DM paleons need some mechanism to regulate their temperature to remain dark. CO will adsorb onto dust grains in molecular clouds and protoplanetary disks rife with dust; however, paleons are presumed to be dust free due to sedimentation. Thus, for a paleon to be dark, it would need an alternative mechanism to regulate gaseous CO, which suggests condensation in a high-density atmosphere over an icy nucleus.
¶    Gaseous CO snows out at the triple point temperature and partial pressure of 67.9 K and 15.35 kPa, respectively. An excess concentration of gaseous CO will lower the gas temperature below the triple point, causing CO to snow out where the partial pressure of CO exceeds 115.35 kPa. The resulting loss of gaseous CO will cause the temperature to drift up toward the regulating triple-point temperature. Likewise, an insufficient concentration of gaseous CO will allow the gas temperature to exceed the triple-point temperature, causing sublimation of CO ice from the icy nucleus. The resulting increase in gaseous CO will cause the temperature to drift down toward the regulating triple-point temperature. Thus the gaseous CO concentration presumably regulates the temperature over the icy nucleus around the 67.9 K triple-point temperature, assuming the atmospheric pressure over the moon-mass nucleus is sufficient to raise the partial pressure of CO to 15.35 kPa.
¶    For paleons to be dark, the CO concentration may have to be regulated to a couple orders of magnitude below the ~ 1% solar metallicity level, or so, which would require a high-density atmospheric pressure over icy nuclei of several hundred bar, or higher. An Earth-mass paleon with (an improbable) solar metallicity would possess an icy-nucleus with a mass equivalent to Earth’s Moon. The thought of Earth’s Moon having a several hundred bar atmosphere seems improbable, until one considers that the icy nucleus is surrounded by an almost an infinite source of gas to compress.
¶    Paleons acquire a majority of their energy input from cosmic rays that dissipate their energy through collisions in the outer envelope of gas globules, with the vast majority of photons passing straight through without absorption or scattering. Paleons also actively accrete stellar metallicity across their vast AU-scale surfaces, including gaseous CO. While the outer envelope may be warmer than the bulk globule due to cosmic ray input, the overall temperature profile of paleons may trace the radial specific concentration of gaseous CO, and in the case of active accretion, the outer envelope may acquire higher concentrations of stellar metallicity than the bulk globule. And elevated stellar metallicity in the outer envelope may cause a temperature inversion, resulting in sinking plumes toward the core. Thus, a positive radial metallicity gradient, due to active accretion may result in thermal convection, causing sinking plumes of cooler, denser higher-metallicity gas falling from the envelope toward the warmer center of mass where the icy nucleus resides. And metallicity enrichment in sinking plumes must continuously radiate away the temperature rise due to increasing head-pressure compression as the plume sinks toward the center of mass, where its metallicity snows out due to the high pressure over the icy nucleus.

Bok globules:
¶    Bok globules are small high-density molecular clouds, with a roughly spherical shape < 100 M☉. Bok globules are often embedded in larger, less-dense molecular clumps with indeterminate shapes, which is unsurprising if Bok globules are bloated paleons feeding on the larger molecular clumps. When paleons are in an active feeding frenzy, they become visible, due to the accreted stellar metallicity that hasn’t had a chance to settle at the center of mass. The mass definition of Bok globules, being less than 100 stellar masses, may indicate a progressively increasing propensity to nucleate stars with increasing mass. Stellar wind from embedded star formation may fragment Bok globules into smaller ‘droplets’, many of which are likely to be self gravitating, but which haven’t yet concentrated their stellar metallicity.
¶   When spiral density waves compress interstellar gas, the resulting turbulence may make direct collapse problematic. Fortuitous paleon interlopers in the vicinity of gas concentrations may act as low entropy seeds, overcoming the turbulence hurdle. The high density of hydrostatic paleons may be adept at converting the turbulence of accreted gas into thermal energy that can be radiated away as infrared photons. Additionally, the compact high-density gas in paleons reduces its specific radiation exposure by nearby hot stars and cosmic rays, making accreting-paleon Bok globules cooler than the surrounding gas they’re devouring. The density of Bok globules in molecular clouds may be a good indication of the density of paleons in the solar neighborhood of the disk plane. And the presumed relative paucity of paleons in the disk plane of spiral galaxies presumably affects the IMF of the resulting stars, possibly skewing the stellar IMF toward more massive stars, compared to gas starved globules in dSphs.
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Self-gravitating gas globules as hydrogen snow clouds:

¶    The above speculation of gas globule temperature regulation by CO concentration regulation is challenged by rigorous scientific modeling of hydrostatic spherical gas globules across the range of scales from 10^-8 M☉ to 0.1 M☉, from a minimum self-gravitating gas-globule mass up to about a Jeans mass, which predicts and calculates the occurrence of hydrogen snow.

¶    This scientific model predicts predicts the occurrence of hydrogen snow and quantifies its physical effects. The density and pressure of hydrostatic gas globules decreases radially outward, where the vast majority of the mass is contained in a densified ‘core’, surrounded by a more-rarified ‘envelope’. This scientific model predicts a temperature inversion caused by hydrogen snowfall, where the core temperature is higher than the surrounding envelope. Hydrogen snow condenses in the cold envelope and falls by sedimentation into the warmer core where it sublimes. This hydrogen snowfall depletes hydrogen in the envelope and enriches it in the core creating a H-He stratification density inversion. This resulting density inversion drives buoyant convection which pumps heat from the cold envelope to the warmer core up a heat gradient, like a heat pump, forcing portions of the envelope to drop below the CMB temperature. This simplified scientific model model does not address the radiant cooling effects of stellar metallicity, instead assuming radiant cooling by hydrogen snowflakes and by the pure rotation line of para-H2, with radiant cooling predominantly occurring from the warmer core.
(Walker and Wardle, 2019)

¶    This Walker-Wardle model predicts that hydrogen snowfall creates an H-He density inversion that results in a temperature inversion—this despite the major source of energy input that drives the temperature and density inversion, in the form of incident cosmic rays, dissipates its energy in the cooler envelope, since cosmic rays can not penetrate to the core, and despite the phase change of hydrogen snow that pumps heat in the opposite direction, from the core to the envelope, where exothermic freezing of hydrogen snow in the envelope is followed by endothermic sublimation in the core.
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Evolution of helium collapse centers into globular clusters and dSphs:

¶    In the warmer densified cores of proto-spiral galaxies (rebound-bifurcated neutron collapse centers), second-helium recombination lagged behind recombination in more rarified regions. One might assume that lagging second-helium recombination resulted in delayed helium collapse in densified proto-spiral galaxies; however, the tiny temperature anisotropy in the CMB today, on the order of 1 part in ten thousand, appears to preclude staged helium collapse, which suggests instead that helium collapse was nearly simultaneous everywhere. For helium collapse to be a near simultaneous event rather than a staggered progression, helium collapse in the cooler relative voids between proto-spiral galaxies must have quickly spread through the denser proto-spiral galaxies at the speed of gravity. Thus, local helium collapse in the cooler relative voids presumably triggered global helium collapse.
¶    Second-helium recombination lagged in the warmer densified regions of proto-spiral galaxies, with the percentage of recombined neutral helium affecting the Jeans mass scale at triggered helium collapse. A lagging rate of second-helium recombination in densified regions dictated a larger Jeans mass, resulting in the triggered collapse of oversized helium collapse centers that underwent sub-fragmentation as second-helium recombination ran to completion, progressively lowering the Jeans mass due to progressive second-helium recombination.
¶    The scale of sub-fragmentation collapse centers may have been less massive than helium collapse centers in the relative voids between proto-spiral galaxies that did not undergo sub-fragmentation. The result of a low mass due to sub-fragmentation may have been insufficient mass to retain the vast majority of paleons born by coronal mass ejection from TP-AGB Pop III stars, with paleons born with ejection speeds of 10s of kilometers per second; i.e., most paleons may have been born with escape velocity from low-mass sub-fragmentation collapse centers. And a dearth of retained paleons reduced the competition for gas, allowing the retained paleons to grow fat by accretion, with many exceeding a Jeans mass which collapsed to form Pop II stars, converting low-mass sub-fragmentation collapse centers into globular clusters. Globular clusters often possess at least two generations of Pop II stars, which is in line with a paleon model, where sub-Jeans mass paleons were pushed over the Jeans mass threshold while mopping up the aftermath of first-generation Pop II stars, and the early demise of massive Pop II stars.

¶    Alternatively, perhaps a dearth of paleons in helium collapse centers formed in densified regions could be attributable to an altered initial mass function (IMF) of their Pop III stars. An elevated or lowered IMF that resulted in fewer Pop III stars expiring as TP-AGB stars would have also formed fewer paleons. And with less competition for gas, more of the sparse paleons exceeded a Jeans mass, forming Pop II stars.
¶    The extreme pithiness of dSphs and the diminutive masses of globular clusters compared to dSphs suggest the former possibility (sub-fragmentation) rather than the latter (altered Pop III star IMFs), for the conversion of collapse centers in the densified cores of proto-spiral galaxies into globular clusters; however, a diminutive sub-fragmentation mass might be the cause of altered IMFs by some unimagined mechanism.

¶    Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are small spherical galaxies with little dust and gas that tend to be very dim, and can span several orders of magnitude in luminosity. They have older stellar populations, like globular clusters, but with radii that are many times larger than globular clusters. And unlike globular clusters, dSphs tend to be DM dominated–indeed, they may be the most DM dominated of all galaxies. “Despite the broad range of observed luminosities, the dark matter masses for all of the pre-SDSS satellites are constrained to within relatively narrow range, approximately ∼ [1 − 6] × 10⁷ M☉ within their inner 600 pc.” (Strigari et al., 2007) Visually, low-luminosity dSphs can be difficult to discriminate from star clusters of the Galactic plane; however, dSphs exhibit more complex star formation histories than star clusters, where dSphs typically contain stars of distinctly different ages, indicating multiple star bursts at distinct intervals.

¶    Giant elliptical galaxies have many times as many globular clusters as spiral galaxies, with M87 having as many as 13,000 globular clusters. Additionally, some studies have concluded that giant elliptical galaxies have little or no dark matter at all. While rotation is difficult to measure in ellipticals, a 2013 gravitational lensing study eliminates this difficulty by measuring Einstein rings of quasars by gravitational lensing. They concluded that DM if present at all does not exceed the amount of luminous matter and its density follows that of luminous matter, in sharp contrast with spiral galaxies (Margain and Chantry, 2013). Giant elliptical galaxies are often understood to have formed from the merger of large spiral galaxies, and a higher proportion of globular clusters suggests that giant elliptical galaxies may have formed in particularly dense regions with a particularly-large proportion of oversized helium collapse centers that underwent sub-fragmentation to form a particularly-high density of globular clusters.

Fornax dSph has 5 globluar clusters:
¶    Fornax dSph is the only known dwarf spheroidal galaxy to possess globular clusters. This arrangement suggests that Fornax dSph may have formed in the densified core of a proto-spiral galaxy with an elevated Jeans mass scale. As the proto-Fornax collapse progressed, second-helium recombination ran to completion, progressively lowering the Jeans mass scale, causing the oversized proto-Fornax helium collapse center to gravitationally fragment into 5 smaller collapse centers that were gravitationally bound to one another.
¶    If these proto-Fornax sub-fragmentation centers were too diminutive to retain the majority of the CKs ejected from their Pop III stars, then the sub-fragmentations may have evolved into globular clusters. And if the greater proto-Fornax collapse center retained the CKs lost by the sub-fragmentations, then the greater proto-Fornax collapse center would have a super abundance of paleons that failed to reach a Jeans mass. Sub-fragmentation may have been very common in the core of the Milky Way, whereupon Galactic tidal forces ripped the globular clusters from their oversized collapse centers. Presumably, the proto-Fornax collapse center was ejected from a nearby spiral galaxy core, likely either the Milky Way or one of the Magellanic Clouds, allowing Fornax dSph to retain its sub-fragmentation globular clusters. By comparison, less-massive helium collapse centers in the proto-Milky Way halo presumably did not experience sub-fragmentation and thus did not spawn globular clusters.
¶    The fact that dynamical friction hasn’t pulled any of these globular clusters into the center of the galaxy may say something about the nature of paleon DM.

Helium enrichment in the cores of globular clusters:
¶    Helium collapse at second-helium recombination predicts helium enrichment in the cores of helium collapse centers that translates to helium enrichment in the cores of sub-fragmentations that evolved into globular clusters, where early star formation may preserve the helium enrichment. Indeed a number of globular clusters exhibit a distinct population of helium-rich stars in their cores, which are surrounded by a more distant population of normal-helium stars. The measured primordial helium mass fraction of the universe is Y = 0.247, where the most helium-enriched stellar populations in globular clusters can be as high as Y = 0.4 (Fare et al., 2018).
¶    Stars with elevated helium evolve faster than normal-helium stars, converting the more-massive enriched-helium stars into less-massive stellar remnants, such that the average enriched-helium stars in the core are less massive than the average normal-helium stars in the periphery. This top heavy mass distribution promotes mass segregation, causing the more-massive normal-helium stars to displace the elevated-helium stars in the core in a dynamic flip-flop.

¶    DM-dominated dSphs are the DM subhaloes sought after by ΛCDM, although their origins are the catastrophism of gravitational collapse of neutral helium DM at second-helium recombination, rather than the gradualism of accretion.
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Cometary knots (CKs) in the Helix nebula:

¶    The Helix planetary nebula is estimated to possess 40,000 cometary knots (Matsuura et al 2009).
¶    (O’Dell and Handron, 1996) give the density, mass and size of the neutral gas in the estimated 3500 cometary knots of the Helix nebula as, hydrogen density ~ 4 x 10⁶ cm^-3, with a CK mass range of ~ 4 x 10²⁵ g to 4 x 10²⁶ g and radii of 60-200 AU, based on the distance to the nebula of 213 pc. This suggests a circa Mars mass (6.4 x 10²⁶ g) upper range for CKs. CKs are non-existent less than 115″ from the host star, and increase in number to the point of overlapping at a distance of 180″. “The fact that there are none in the innermost region argues that the Cometary Knots are confined to a flattened volume rather than being spherically distributed.”
¶    (O’Dell and Handron, 1996) suggest Rayleigh-Taylor instability for CK formation, either in the late planetary nebula phase or early ‘primordial’ accretion disk phase of the young stellar object.

¶    Manly Astrophysics (Walker et al. 2017) presumes preexisting self-gravitating planetary-mass paleons become gravitationally bound within the Hill spheres of their host stars at stellar formation, with the cometary knots of the Helix nebula as a luminous example of this otherwise dark form of baryonic matter.

¶    The alternative suggested here is CK formation by massive CME during the terminal TP-AGB phase of moderate mass stars.

¶    CKs in planetary nebulae today are suggested here to be the modern analogs to primordial CKs of Pop III stars that swelled with accretion then went dark to become DM paleons. The analogy may be almost exact, or it may be somewhat more distant, due to differences in stellar metallicity and ambient conditions, such that modern CKs might not be be self-gravitating gas globules, although they very likely are.
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Quasar scintillation:

¶    Manly Astrophysics (Walker et al., 2017) proposes baryonic DM in the form of planetary-mass globules of self-gravitating gas in hydrostatic equilibrium, coining the term ‘paleons’ for their presumed old age. Their evidence for paleons comes from the scintillation of distant quasars by foreground plasma. Recent publications have isolated these scintillating plasma masses within or just beyond the Hill spheres of hot A stars. Curiously, the scintillating plasma in the vicinity of hot A stars is radially elongated toward the hot stars, and the plasma has a relatively-small differential velocity with respect to their presumed host stars. The quantity of gas globules (~ 10⁵) ) necessary to explain the rate of observed quasar scintillation around hot stars is calculated to be on the order of the mass of the host star itself, assuming paleons are long-lived hydrostatic objects that require a planetary-mass to be self gravitating. Manly Astrophysics hypothesizes that ~ 10⁵ paleons are gravitationally bound within the Hill spheres of hot stars, which are nominally detectable only by quasar scintillation around hot stars, but may become fully visible in bright planetary nebulae.
¶    The evidence that gas globules within the Hill spheres of hot stars are approximately equivalent to the masses of the host stars themselves presumes that the scintillation is caused by self-gravitating gas globules and secondly, from a piece of indirect logic. The radial scintillation pointing to Iota Centauri (Alhakim) is 1.75 pc from its presumed host star, but for a distance of 1.75 pc to lie within the Hill sphere of Iota Centauri requires an additional 5 M☉, with the additional mass presumably in the form of paleons.

¶    Alternatively, it is suggested here that hot-star quasar scintillation is caused by hot-star ionization of their own CMEs, with hot-star CMEs having a log-scale intermediate mass between the diminutive mass of solar CMEs and the planetary mass of CKs in planetary nebulae. This requires a continual production of CMEs with escape velocity to keep the Roche spheres sufficiently populated to explain the frequency of observed quasar scintillation.
¶    Solar CMEs have varying ejection velocities, some slower than the mean solar wind velocity of 145 km/s and some faster, where solar CME interaction with the solar wind speeds up the slower ones and slows down the faster ones. The 40 km/s expansion rate of the inner ring of the Helix nebula (O’Dell et al., 2004) has apparently overtaken the CKs to create cometary tails, indicating a lower radial velocity for the CKs themselves, suggesting that larger CMEs may have lower speeds.

¶    The expansion rate of solar CMEs reduces the electron density to about 10 cm^-3 at a radial distance of 1 AU, falling off rapidly as a function of R^-3 (University of Reading, PROPAGATION OF INFORMATION WITHIN CORONAL MASS EJECTION). Coincidentally, the 1 AU solar electron density of 10 cm^-3 is the calculated electron density responsible for intra-day variability (IDV) quasar scintillation (Tuntsov, Bignall and Walker 2013).
¶    The Manly Astrophysics calculated quantity of scintillating plasma masses (10⁵) within hot star Roche spheres should not be an impediment for a CME origin, considering that solar CME are created at a rate of about 3 a day near solar maxima, and one every 5 days near solar minima (NASA archive, ‘Coronal Mass Ejection’); however, exponential expansion of CMEs may not require nearly as many ejections to create the observed rate of quasar scintillation, if exponentially-expanding hot star CME become become significantly larger than hydrostatic paleons at parsec-scale distances from hot stars.
¶    The first stellar CME was measured in 2019 around OU Andromedae (HR 9024), with a calculated CME mass of 1.2 +2.6 -0.8 x 10²¹ g and a velocity of 90 +/- 30 km/s (Argiroffi et al., 2019), which is about 6 orders of magnitude more massive than solar CMEs. By a naive calculation (beginning with the same volume as a solar CME but 10⁶ more massive and expanding at a constant R^-3 rate) an OU Andromedae mass CME would only drop off to an electron density of 10 cm^-3 at a distance of 4-1/2 pc, well beyond the Roche sphere of even the largest A type stars. More realistically, the original CME volume of an OU Andromeda-mass CME would be considerably larger than a solar CME, but presumably by the mass factor of 10⁶, and the expansion rate for a vastly-larger initial mass might differ from the solar CME expansion rate.

¶    Additionally, there may be a connection between variable stars and massive CMEs, considering TP-AGB stars as the mother of all variable stars that eject planetary-mass CKs. And indeed, the first CME event recorded on a star beyond the sun is a variable star with fast rotation, OU Andromedae (HR 9024). Additionally, 2 recent quasar scintillation studies, with ionization attributed to hot stars, involve variable stars. A 2019 study (Bignall et al., 2019) of scintillating quasar, PKS B1322−110, attributes scintillating ionization to hot variable star, Spica. A 2017 study (Walker et al., 2017) of two scintillating quasars, J1819+3845 and PKS1257-326.
– J1819+3845: Quasar line of sight passes through the Hill sphere of the rapidly-rotating hot variable star, Vega at a radial distance of 0.461 pc.
– PKS1257-326: Quasar line of sight passes through the Hill sphere of the hot variable star HD 112934 at a distance of 0.16 pc; however, the orientation of the scintillating plasma is not parallel with the line joining the star and the radio source, so HD 112934 is rejected as the host star in favor of Iota Centauri (Alhakim), at more than 10 times the radial distance of 1.75 pc. But for the 1.75 pc radial distance of Alhakim to lie within the Hill sphere of Alhakim would minimally require an additional mass of 5 M☉, tripling the mass of the system, which the authors presume to be composed of planetary-mass paleons.
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Molecular filaments in molecular clouds:

¶    Circa .1 parsec wide molecular filaments in IRDCs are counterintuitive from a gravitational collapse perspective, and suggest electromagnetic involvement. Electromagnetic involvement might arise from paleon streams from disrupted dSphs plowing through molecular clouds that have an ionized component. A paleon stream on an inclined orbit around the Galaxy that passes through a densified interstellar cloud will tend to entrain gas into parallel moving streams like cometary tails. And if these parallel moving streams incorporate ionized gas, then the parallel moving charges will create parallel magnetic fields that tend to pinch together, like two parallel wires carrying electric current flowing in the same direction, which may form the ~ .1 pc wide molecular filaments.
¶    If densified molecular filaments fortuitously incorporate primordial paleons, or their modern CK equivalents, these self-gravitating gas globules will feed on the magnetically-densified gas and may quickly grow to the scale of Bok globules that exceed a Jeans mass. Molecular filaments are well known stellar nurseries, and their star formation is suggested here to be likely attributable to preexisting gas globules fortuitously incorporated into molecular filaments.
¶    Molecular filaments are sometimes associated with a higher-level structure, where filaments bunch together to form ‘hub filaments’. Again this may be a magnetic effect, causing magnetic filaments to pinch together to form a higher-level structure with the central hub as massive as ≳ 1000 M⊙ pc^-1 (Tokuda et al., 2019).
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Broad-line region (BLR) clouds and G-objects around SMBHs:

¶   Extreme conditions around SMBHs may make paleons visible by subliming and/or vaporizing a significant portion of their metallicity. These extreme conditions also highlight the durability of paleons.

BLR clouds:
¶   X-ray absorption variability is a common feature of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Short-term X-ray variability of the AU-scale X-ray emitting accretion disk around AGN, on time scales as short as a few hundred seconds, is modeled by occultation of dense AU-scale clouds orbiting thousands of gravitational radii from the SMBH. Modeling suggests the following parameters for the occluding clouds:
– column densities of at least a few 10²³ cm^-2
– linear dimensions of the order of 10¹³–10¹⁴ cm
– orbital velocities in excess of 10³ km s^-1
– densities n∼10¹⁰–10¹¹ cm^-3
– orbital distance corresponding to 10¹⁶–10¹⁷ cm, for black hole mass in the range from 106 to a few 107 solar masses
(Risaliti et al., 2010)

G-objects:
¶   Additionally, 6 gassy ‘G-objects’ have been discovered orbiting our Milky Way’s SMBH, SgrA*, with orbital periods ranging from 170 to 1,600 years. One G-object, G2, survived SgrA* periapsis in 2014, but experienced tidal elongation and revealed a dusty interior. Subsequent, to periapsis, G2 appears to be becoming more compact again.
¶   A recent analysis of 13 years’ of near infrared data from Keck Observatory tripled the number of G-objects from 2 to 6 (Ciurlo et al., 2019). The authors suggested recent binary-stellar mergers for the gassy/dusty objects, where binary mergers may have been induced by interaction with SgrA*, but they can not rule out gas globules as the composition of G-objects.
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Discussion–Conclusion:

Success:
¶    Three epochs of baryonic DM is more predictive and explanatory than exotic DM, and far more specific on timing. Three epochs predicts top-down formation of twin-binary pairs of proto-spiral galaxies at BBN, complete with primordial SMBHs, and predicts fragmentation at second-helium recombination into collapse centers that evolved into DM-dominated dSphs and globular clusters, explaining the origin and nature of DM in dSphs and its absence in globular clusters. Additionally, three epochs explains star formation today as accreting paleons larger than a Jeans mass, and possibly explains stellar-nursery molecular-hydrogen filaments, in a baryonic-DM context.
¶    By comparison, exotic DM struggles to explain early SMBHs (> z = 6), and struggles to explain the relative absence of luminous baryonic matter in dSphs, with the ’too big to fail problem’. And exotic DM relies on fine tuning or secondary mechanisms to explain away the complete absence of DM in globular clusters, such fine tuning the temperature of warm DM or secondary mechanisms, such as exotic DM ejection by globular cluster supernovae.

Failure:
¶    The canonical baryon-to-photon ratio predicts the observed D/H ratio within uncertainties, whereas the observed D/H ratio is problematic for a baryonic DM theory requiring a 6-fold increased baryon-to-photon ratio. Neutron collapse predicts a deviation in canonical conditions at BBN. In particular, an increased expansion rate in the relative voids between neutron collapse centers may have increased the amount of unreacted deuterium at the conclusion of BBN, fortuitously offsetting the effect of a 6-fold increased baryon-to-photon ratio required by a baryonic DM theory. Additionally, electrostatic rebound in neutron collapse centers caused an increased expansion rate by the end of BBN in proto-spiral galaxies as well, again fortuitously offsetting the effect of a 6-fold increased baryon-to-photon ratio. But in rebounded (proto-)spiral galaxies there is some indication that the increased expansion rate over compensated for the increased baryon-to-photon ratio, resulting in an enriched D/H ratio.
¶    This fortuitous offsetting of a a 6-fold increased baryon-to-photon ratio on the primordial D/H ratio by an increased expansion rate caused by neutron collapse is perhaps the greatest hurdle for any baryonic DM theory.

Summary:
– Three epochs of baryonic DM
1) Neutrons appear in hadron epoch, collapsing and rebounding to form proto-spiral galaxies
2) Helium at second-helium recombination collapsing to form dSphs
3) Self-gravitating gas globules (paleons) ejected by CME from Pop III stars
– Hubble tension—as warm primordial photons at photon decoupling following second-helium recombination
– Spiral galaxies—as electrostatic rebound of neutron collapse centers during BBN
– DSphs—as helium collapse centers, triggered by second-helium recombination
– Cometary knots in planetary nebulae as self-gravitating gas globules formed by CME
– Paleons—as self-gravitating gas globules formed by CME from Pop III stars as baryonic DM
– Globular clusters—as small sub-fragmentations of helium collapse centers that lost most of their paleons
– Bok globules—as currently-accreting paleons greater than a Jeans mass
– Pop III stars—as the origin of baryonic DM in planetary nebula by CME ejection of cometary knot paleons
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