Quote: See Left, Again.
Since our solar system only occupies a minuscule amount of the actual space of the solar system, is dark matter detectable in the small mass of the solar system, or is it only detectable in the extremely (unimaginably) large masses of galaxies and galaxy clusters? Simply, is dark matter detectable close to home?
Comment: So, last time I set forth a few incongruities in the big bang theory. I also spent a long time to spell out what I was thinking, so that's probably why Dave didn't comment on my Blog. SO, aside from this lengthy and unnecessarily wordy and very unbecoming introductory clause, I shall try to be as concise as possible, and not talk your ear off about things that were probably not very well explained by my rantings, OK? Good; let's proceed.
I think that it is amazing to think about the size of the universe and the solar system. I hadn't realized how much of space is actually that, nor had I thought about the amount of time it would take for interstellar travel. It's incredible to think that it would take 25,000 years just to reach Proxima Centauri, which, incidentally, in nearby Alpha Centauri (really a binary system), but, again, the other two stars are so far away that Proxima Centauri orbits them about every million years, give or take half a million. So, even within a single star system the distances between relatively close stars is very far. I read that the Pleiades star cluster had a number of stars that were only a few light-weeks apart, very close for not being a traditional binary or triple or any sort of star system (besides a cluster). Then I thought, well how far is a few light-weeks? It turns out that 3 light-weeks (3 being a few) is 337.99 billion miles, or about 110 times the distance to Pluto. It takes 6 to 10 years to get to Pluto, so on average, a short (I'd say most of these stars are not just 3 light-weeks away) journey between really really really really close stars would take, oh, say about 700 years as a conservative measure (it's more like 1100 years if you do the math @ 35 000 mph). I'd say that space is probably the most accurate term that astronomers have yet come up with to describe our universe. But boy, what a big space we have (of course, we could cynically note that that's all we have, but, oh well...).
Absalom, thank you for your thoughtful response. I would apologize for not commenting on the previous, but I have 98 students, and to read and properly comment would on average take about 6 minutes. Do the math and it is roughly 10 hours. But hey, these blogs are open for everyone to comment on, so I would encourage you to read and comment on every blog!
ReplyDeleteRemember that Dark Matter is just a theory to explain the discrepancies in the mass of galaxies. We have a lot of theories that have been proved wrong. Einstein introduced a cosmological constant in general relativity as he thought the universe was static. He called it the biggest mistake of his life, as he was on the verge of discovering that the universe was expanding. I'm not saying that there isn't dark matter, but maybe with a bit of time and cleverness we will have a better explanation?