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Re: (meteorobs) Dark Matter/ Anti-matter collisions
Dave and meteorobs,
My astronomy students are studying about this right now. I would love to
send you a fax of some copies of their readings or I'll mail them if you
have no fax. There is a big scientific effort both theoretical and
observational. Most of the observational work so far has been to soot down
possibilities. The Hubble telescope for example has searched for the myriad
of low mass red stars in globular clusters that was proposed as one
possibility and found none at all.
Fortunately the evedince for the existence of the dark matter also
indicates that it has to be way out in the galaxy past the sun's orbit out
in the halo or beyond in a new area called the corona and named to give a
region for the dark matter. The dynamics are unclear to me but again
fortunately it is most unlikely that this stuff would even come our way
assuming that it is in chunks instead of some exotic form. The wildest
speculation is that it is some new kind of matter and may not even be able
to for chuncks of stuff. It is electron bonding that makes our kind of
matter both solid and able to emit light, so if this stuff is made of new
particles that are not subject to the electric force, then it can't emit
light and would have to have another method of bonding.
Antimatter is being lookied into and the April 1988 "Scientific Americal"
has the latest on that. It is not considered a dark matter possibility but
if there are chuncks of the stuff drifting around, they would be our worst
nightmare indeed
Well, I have exhausted my knowledge on this subject and have to get to the
College.
Clear Skies,
Terry,
PS I took my astronomy lab to my meteor observing location last night for
lab. During the course of their work we saw several sporadics and they were
awed. Many of our young people no longer get to see a real sky without a
lot of effort.
> Dark matter has got to be an observer's worst nightmare.... maybe. If
>dark matter is made of some non-luminous, non-light-reflecting material, what
>would we see if a chunk of it entered our atmosphere? Of course by that time
>it would be too late to do anything about it, and if it was big enough to
>cause cataclysm, would we ever even know what hit us? And, what about the
>possibility of collision with large objects composed of anti-matter? The
>destructive effects could be magnitudes greater than collision with a regular-
>matter object. At least we would see it coming.... I think.
> I'm curious.... is there anywhere on the planet a dedicated scientific
>effort being made to figure out what dark matter is? Or are we just hoping
>we'll figure that out as we discover other stuff? I would think that knowing
>the true nature of dark matter would be a pretty high priority, since the
>overwhelming majority of our Universe's mass is made of it.
>
>
>Dave G
>
>
> upon an entitydarkthe possibility of colliding
*****************************************
Terry Richardson
Department of Physics and Astronomy
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424
pager #937-1048
note new area code for the SC Lowcountry!
843 953-8071 phone
843 953-4824 fax
http://www.cofcdot edu/~richardt/
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