  The vastness of a clear night sky evokes curiosity about the distance to the
stars. There are two primary methods for estimating stellar distances, parallax
and luminosity. In this study, we present a new analysis revealing a noteworthy
discrepancy between these two methods. Due to the accuracy of GAIA, parallaxes
can directly be converted into distances. In contrast, luminosity distances
require, apart from the determination of the apparent and absolute brightness
of a star, the reddening value that allows a correction for interstellar
extinction. Using 47 stars with non-peculiar reddening curves from the
high-quality sample we find here that the luminosity distance overestimates the
parallactic distance for most (80 %) of these stars. This puzzling discrepancy
can only be removed when incorporating a new population of large dust grains,
so-called dark dust, with our model that respects contemporary constraints of
the inter-stellar dust and is updated to scope for the first time with absolute
reddening. The model provides a visual extinction which unifies the conflicting
distances. Another far-reaching consequence of the flat absorption and
scattering properties of dark dust is that it broadens the light curves of SN
Ia, which serves as a measure of the quantity of dark energy.
