Only with modern instruments have astronomers been able to detect and model out the effects of this bizarre phenomenon:

On remote mountaintops around the world, major astronomical centers hum along, with state of the art digital sensors, computers, air conditioning, infrastructure, and motors to turn the giant telescopes.

Deep in Chile’s Atacama desert, the Paranal Observatory is an astronomical Mecca.

This facility draws two megawatts of power, enough for around two thousand homes.

What astronomers get for all this is photons, tiny mass-less particles of light. They stream in from across time and space by the trillions from nearby sources, down to one or two per second from objects at the edge of the visible universe.

In this age of precision astronomy, observers have been studying the properties of these particles, to find clues to how stars live and die, how galaxies form, how black holes grow, and more.

What do you think this stuff is?  Feel free to comment with your theories.