NASA pictures of dark matter collisions

[jim mcnamara]

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/marc...that-may-help-identify-dark-matter/index.html

The take away seems to be that some ideas about dark matter may have problems. The possibilities checklist of dark matter interactions has been shortened.

There are some really great pictures of galactic halos in colliding galaxies. Which make looking at the link a must. IMO.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

What about the Hubble telescope makes the image blue?

 

[Chalnoth]

What about the Hubble telescope makes the image blue?

The blue blobs are estimates of the mass of the galaxy cluster by examining the distortions of galaxies behind the cluster due to the cluster's gravity.

 

[marcus]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07675
The non-gravitational interactions of dark matter in colliding galaxy clusters
David Harvey, Richard Massey, Thomas Kitching, Andy Taylor, Eric Tittley
(Submitted on 26 Mar 2015)
Collisions between galaxy clusters provide a test of the non-gravitational forces acting on dark matter. Dark matter's lack of deceleration in the `bullet cluster collision' constrained its self-interaction cross-section \sigma_DM/m < 1.25cm2/g (68% confidence limit) for long-ranged forces. Using the Chandra and Hubble Space Telescopes we have now observed 72 collisions, including both `major' and `minor' mergers. Combining these measurements statistically, we detect the existence of dark mass at 7.6\sigma significance. The position of the dark mass has remained closely aligned within 5.8+/-8.2 kpc of associated stars: implying a self-interaction cross-section \sigma_DM/m < 0.47 cm2/g (95% CL) and disfavoring some proposed extensions to the standard model.
5 Pages, 4 Figures and 18 pages supplementary information
Science, Vol 347, Issue 6229 (2015)

 

[wabbit]

Thanks. This seems to be the study concerned:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07675

Edit: rest deleted - @marcus, you were faster than me !

 

[Drakkith]

implying a self-interaction cross-section \sigma_DM/m < 0.47 cm2/g (95% CL)

What exactly does this mean?

 

[marcus]

Thanks. This seems to be the study concerned:
... !

Hi! It's interesting how they map invisible mass concentrations using so called "weak lensing" of background shapes. I know you're familiar with this but someone new to it might not be.

Background shapes get "squashed" in the direction of increasing mass. Circles become ellipses elongated in the direction perpendicular to where the mass is. So the short axis of the ellipse, the "minor axis" will tend to be aligned along the mass gradient. So they can actually produce contour maps of the distribution of invisible mass.

Statistical methods are needed because the background shapes are not perfect circles. They are roughly circular galaxies but tilted randomly so that they appear ellipses oriented in random directions. As their light comes to us, passing the mass concentration, there is a further elongation or, to put it another way, squashing of the shapes.

 

[Chalnoth]

What exactly does this mean?

If you have one particle of dark matter passing through a cloud of dark matter particles, this cross section gives the expected distance before the dark matter particle is deflected.

The mass is a part of the calculation because the particle mass determines how many particles there are (we know how dense the dark matter is, but a dark matter particle with half the mass would require twice as many particles to make up that same density).

 

[marcus]

What exactly does this mean?

If DM particles had a substantial collision cross section (non gravitational interaction) then two clouds could bump, and cancel each others momentum. So a larger cloud would remain at the site of the collision.
But for example in the "bullet cluster" collision where two clusters collided the two DM clouds basically just passed through each other and came out the other side. The ordinary matter galaxies did likewise because they were scattered so sparsely in the cluster that they had very little chance of colliding.

But the collision left a cloud of hot hydrogen gas in the middle, radiating Xray. Because the intergalactic medium hydrogen did have a substantial interaction cross section. Those clouds could collide and cancel each other's momentum and accumulate at the site of the collision.

When clusters collide the stars and dark matter particles pass through freely. Only the intergalactic medium, the ordinary (hot, partly ionized) gas, actually crashes.

 

[wabbit]

I was impressed by what seems to be very precise post-treatment of the image to correct for residual aberrations (off-axis astigmatism it seems from how they describe it) in Hubble's optics (figure S4, p.8, supplementary material). This might otherwise interfere with their interpretation of the image I presume, for smaller galaxy images.

 

[wabbit]

Hi! It's interesting how they map invisible mass concentrations using so called "weak lensing" of background shapes. I know you're familiar with this

I was aware there was distortion but not really of its precise shape, thanks for the explanation.

 

[SpiderET]

Is this the first nail in the coffin of Lambda-CDM model or is this just small scratch for it?

Popular article about this topic:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015...ters-offer-stongest-case-yet-for-dark-matter/

 

[wabbit]

I would read it more as a measurement of dark matter properties (well, that's not much of a stretch given that this is how the experiment is constructed and reported). There aren't so many of these as far as I know, and more are needed to narrow down the search for what it might be. Excluding some of the proposed models sounds like excellent news for this search.

I see arstechnica titles "strongest case yet for dark matter". I need to read it now, not seeing yet why it adds so much to the case given that the evidence was already pretty strong. Edit : not sure the article really supports the title, but it's a well done piece, thanks for the link.

 

[Chalnoth]

Is this the first nail in the coffin of Lambda-CDM model or is this just small scratch for it?

Popular article about this topic:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015...ters-offer-stongest-case-yet-for-dark-matter/

Why do you think this in any way challenges $\Lambda$CDM?

 

[SpiderET]

Why do you think this in any way challenges $\Lambda$CDM?

Somehow I can't copy text from the pdf, but in the preprint on page 1 and 2 is written, that interacting particles would solve some problems of incorrect predictions of Lambda CDM model. But this paper has shown that the particles don't interact.

But personally I would go even further. This dark matter has strange properties, it interacts gravitationally with normal matter but it doesn't interact gravitationally with other dark matter? Seems like another sign that we need new theory which will include some extended or modified gravity theory.

 

[Chalnoth]

Somehow I can't copy text from the pdf, but in the preprint on page 1 and 2 is written, that interacting particles would solve some problems of incorrect predictions of Lambda CDM model. But this paper has shown that the particles don't interact.

It hasn't shown that they don't interact. It's placed an upper limit on how strongly they can possibly interact. While there are models where dark matter particles have no interactions except through gravity, most models have dark matter that interacts weakly with itself and with normal matter.

But personally I would go even further. This dark matter has strange properties, it interacts gravitationally with normal matter but it doesn't interact gravitationally with other dark matter? Seems like another sign that we need new theory which will include some extended or modified gravity theory.

Yes, dark matter interacts gravitationally with other dark matter. By "doesn't interact" they're talking about the fact that dark matter particles rarely collide with one another.

 

[PWiz]

Very interesting. It would appear that even collisions between entire galaxies cannot induce dipole moments in the dark matter and "light it up". I think it's reasonable to suspect that dark matter does not have internal organization like atoms, which makes me suspect that the absence of any electromagnetic interaction is due to the presence of uncharged hadrons that are simply held together by the gravitational force. Anyone care to tell me how right/wrong I am?

 

[wabbit]

Not an expert in any way here - but hadrons are standard model particles. As such, they are as far as I know pretty much excluded as a significant component of dark matter defined in a broad sense (which does include hadrons in "baryonic dark matter"), and I'm quite sure they're not a component of cold dark matter as currenly modeled in LCDM.

Also, hadrons are held together by the strong nuclear force, not by gravitation which affects them far more weakly. And they do interact with EM - free neutrons quicly decay to proton + electron + photon for instance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Free_neutron_decay)

 

[Jimster41]

Very interesting. It would appear that even collisions between entire galaxies cannot induce dipole moments in the dark matter and "light it up". I think it's reasonable to suspect that dark matter does not have internal organization like atoms, which makes me suspect that the absence of any electromagnetic interaction is due to the presence of uncharged hadrons that are simply held together by the gravitational force. Anyone care to tell me how right/wrong I am?

Would "uncharged Hadrons held together by g..." be little clumps of neutrons?

I just read they have @ 600s lifetime. Are there other kinds of uncharged hadrons?

I'd appreciate a clarification of just how likely it is, given this new upper constraint on self interaction, that DM is truly non self interacting. I mean is this number truly small/large or just bounding off the normal end. If this stuff is at once non self interacting, though differentiated in space time (identifiably somewhere and not somewhere) then one implication is that it is everywhere in space time only itself - entangled, non-local.

 

[PWiz]

Would "uncharged Hadrons held together by g..." be little clumps of neutrons?

I don't see any reason to completely rule out neutron stars with particularly thin ionized gas layers.
@wabbit I wasn't saying that the "inside" of the hadron is held together by gravity, I was saying that individual hadrons must be held my gravity (no graviton in the standard model yet ). It's like comparing intramolecular forces with intermolecular ones (the analogy is not a brilliant one, but serves the purpose). Thanks for the reference of CDM.

 

[Jimster41]

I don't see any reason to completely rule out neutron stars with particularly thin ionized gas layers.

Clearly your theory (or rather "theery") is more grounded than mine... Now I need to look up neutron stars today. My cartoon is that in such a star remnant the neutrons are stable only because they got pushed down into a deep enough gravity well during stellar death, their decay is inhibited?

If so, seems like the required number of these could be ruled in or out given the age of the universe and rates of stellar death. And I would think that such gravity wells would interact with each other...

 

[Orodruin]

which makes me suspect that the absence of any electromagnetic interaction is due to the presence of uncharged hadrons that are simply held together by the gravitational force. Anyone care to tell me how right/wrong I am?

What you are thinking about are essentially massive compact halo object (or MACHOs for short). There are large problems in explaining the dark matter using MACHOs, including, but not limited to, producing enough baryons in the early Universe while still being ok with the primordial abundance of the elements, as well as studies of the large scale structure of the Universe.

 

[PWiz]

Clearly your theory is more grounded than mine... Now I need to look up neutron stars today. My cartoon is that in such a star remnant the neutrons are stable only because they got pushed down into a deep enough gravity well, their decay is inhibited?

I just want to get one thing out of the way - I'm not making/advertising a theory. I'm merely speculating and I want to know if my reasoning is correct (in accordance with current physics of course).
Secondly, please don't place so much trust in my ideas. I'm just in HS and I could be hopelessly wrong, so let's not give any special credibility to what I have to say
A neutron star is simply the end result of a massive star (mass>1.39 solar masses) after all it's fuel has been "burnt", where the electron degeneracy pressure has been overcome (no outward radiative pressure from nuclear fusion), forcing electrons and protons to fuse together to form neutrons, which (being half spin fermions) by Pauli's exclusion principle can't occupy the same quantum state. The star shrinks in size until the neutron degeneracy pressure equals the gravitational pull. If the gravity is strong enough though, the total number of microstates sky rockets and the neutrons gain more "liberty" as to which state they can occupy (the wavelength that the neutron can have is approximately given by $\frac{N^{1/3}}{V^{1/3}}$, where N is the number of neutrons and V is the volume of the neutron star), and the volume shrinks below the Schwarzschild radius. The thing is that neutrons are electrically neutral hadrons, and do not interact with photons (a gauge boson which mediates the electromagnetic force), so the bulk of the neutron star is actually invisible. Only ionized gas near the surface interacts with light.
@Orodruin I guess I was jumping to an erraneous conclusion

 

[wabbit]

I don't see any reason to completely rule out neutron stars with particularly thin ionized gas layers.
@wabbit I wasn't saying that the "inside" of the hadron is held together by gravity, I was saying that individual hadrons must be held by gravity

I'm not sure what the impact of that is here though. Hadrons in a nucleus are bound together by the strong force, then atoms are bound together by the EM force - then of course every large scale structure is held by gravity, be it formed of dark matter or ordinary matter.

 

[PWiz]

I'm not sure what the impact of that is here though. Hadrons in a nucleus are bound together by the strong force, then atoms are bound together by the EM force - then of course every large scale structure is held by gravity, be it formed of dark matter or ordinary matter.

But if we're only talking about electrically neutral hadrons, there won't be any EM force, so you won't have atoms, just a soup of hadrons.

 

[wabbit]

@PWiz, about your idea of neutron stars, I see a few issues here. First, neutrons do interact with EM though I m not sure it's relevant here. Then, neutron stars do radiate EM (X-rays mostly I believe). AFAIK neutron stars are not counted as dark matter, but as ordinary matter - but perhaps that depends on what one calls dark matter.

 

[PWiz]

@PWiz, about your idea of neutron stars, I see a few issues here. First, neutrons do interact with EM though I m not sure it's relevant here. Then, neutron stars do radiate EM (X-rays mostly I believe). AFAIK neutron stars are not counted as dark matter, but as ordinary matter - but perhaps that depends on what one calls dark matter.

Yes, orodruin has already pointed out MACHOs, and I can see that neutrons stars aren't likely candidates for dark matter. And to be honest, I did not know that neutrons interact with the EM force. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[wabbit]

But if we're only talking about electrically neutral hadrons, there won't be any EM force, so you won't have atoms, just a soup of hadrons.

Or a soup of quarks or something : ) I don't know if or how that radiates EM, but the outer layers of a neutron stars are more sedate than that if I am not mistaken, and the end result is both neutrino and photon emission I think (this is fast drifting away from what I think I understand though, an expert opinion would be welcome...,)

 

[PWiz]

EM - free neutrons quicly decay to proton + electron + photon for instance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Free_neutron_decay)

Or a soup of quarks or something : ) I don't know if or how that radiates EM, but the outer layers of a neutron stars are more sedate than that if I am not mistaken, and the end result is both neutrino and photon emission I think (this is fast drifting away from what I think I understand though, an expert opinion would be welcome...,)

Wait, doesn't the photon emission in the outer layer of a neutron occur because we have ionized gas over there (not just electrically neutral neutrons)? I mean I just can't understand why a photon would interact with a neutron when according to the standard model it is a gauge boson whose interactions are exclusively limited to charged particles :/
And I don't think that decay occurs in a neutron star; electrons produced would simply be forced to fuse back with the protons because the electron degeneracy pressure has already been overcome!

 

[wabbit]

You may be right here, I was thinking of free neutron decay which can produce photons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Free_neutron_decay). Maybe it's incorrect to interpret that as interaction with EM ?

And about the mechanism of neutron star radiation, I was mentionning this as a separate issue - whatever the precise mechanism, which I don't know (not questioning your explanation here, outer layer emission must at least contribute and perhaps they fully account for it), they do emit EM waves.

 

[PWiz]

You may be right here, I was thinking of free neutron decay which can produce photons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Free_neutron_decay). Maybe it's incorrect to interpret that as interaction with EM ?

All that I'm saying is that a neutron star consists of neutrons in its core and ionized gas in its exterior. The outside of the star should interact with photons, but the inside must be transparent. If a non-rotating neutron star with a particularly thin (i.e. negligible) layer of ionized gas is present somewhere, it should look pretty much invisible to the eye (remember that only rotating neutron stars emit EM radiation). Therefore, I thought that such invisible, yet massive objects would qualify as dark matter.
EDIT: Sorry for being so fussy, but I couldn't tell if you're joking or not:

Or a soup of quarks or something

Individual quarks do not exist in nature because of color confinement.

 

[wabbit]

All that I'm saying is that a neutron star consists of neutrons in its core and ionized gas in its exterior. The outside of the star should interact with photons, but the inside must be transparent. If a non-rotating neutron star with a particularly thin (i.e. negligible) layer of ionized gas is present somewhere, it should look pretty much invisible to the eye (remember that only rotating neutron stars emit EM radiation). Therefore, I thought that such invisible, yet massive objects would qualify as dark matter.

Interesting, thanks.

The argument I've seen simply states that neutron stars are hot so they emit blackbody radiation in the x ray range, but maybe this wouldn't apply to such a "bare" neutron star if it can exist - might it emit mostly hard to detect neutrinos ?

So I guess the one sound argument against that neutron star hypothesis is the one Orodruin gave, that MACHOs are currently ruled out as a significant component of dark matter.

 

[PWiz]

Interesting, thanks.

I would still suspect some EM from such a "bare neutron star" but it could very well be below detectability. And an undetectable neutron star would presumably be counted as a MACHO.

So I guess the only sound argument against that neutron star hypothesis is the one Orodruin gave, that MACHOs are currently ruled out as a significant component of dark matter.

I wouldn't call them ruled out, but it's definitely difficult to reconcile the observations of the current universe with that model, since most of the neutron stars would eventually form black holes after colliding with each other if the Tolman-Oppenhiemer-Volkoff limit is exceeded (it is a mass limit which when exceeded causes the gravitational force to overcome the neutron degeneracy pressure), and the black holes would eventually evaporate because they emit Hawking radiation. So no baryonic matter would be formed in that scenario (come to think of it, we would never have baryonic matter in the universe in the first place as it would eventually all be converted to EM radiation if 80% of the universe consisted of these things[I'm excluding primordial black holes for simplicity]).

 

[PWiz]

The argument I've seen simply states that neutron stars are hot so they emit blackbody radiation in the x ray range

Rotating neutron stars induce magnetic dipole moments in the outer ionized gas layers. Photons (any EM radiation) will then be emitted. The outer layer consists of degenerate matter and high energy neutrinos and photons are released because the pressure is less on the outside, permitting charged particles to come into picture. If you take a static neutron star with a thin outer layer (as I've previously speculated), you should have a very-hard-to-detect neutron star. (Remember that no matter how hot a group of neutrons in thermal equilibrium with its environment is, it will never emit any EM/black body radiation if the neutrons are not allowed to decay)

 

[mfb]

Also, hadrons are held together by the strong nuclear force, not by gravitation which affects them far more weakly. And they do interact with EM - free neutrons quicly decay to proton + electron + photon for instance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Free_neutron_decay)

They decay to proton + electron + anti-electronneutrino via the weak interaction. The electromagnetic interaction cannot let neutrons decay as it cannot change quark flavors. Additional photons from the decay are possible but not necessary.

I just read they have @ 600s lifetime. Are there other kinds of uncharged hadrons?

All other uncharged hadrons have much shorter lifetimes.

I don't see any reason to completely rule out neutron stars with particularly thin ionized gas layers.

Microlensing (well, the absence of) rules out stellar-mass objects as significant contribution to dark matter. Also, it would be unclear where all those cold neutron stars would have come from.
Neutrons do interact with photons of sufficient energy - they can scatter at the quarks inside the neutron. At lower energy, you still have the neutron magnetic moment.Concerning the original news, I wonder what previous expectations for the cross-section were. Those limits are orders of magnitude above the limits for dark matter / regular matter interactions, and orders of magnitude above typical weak cross-sections. So what type of interaction was expected?

 

[PWiz]

Neutrons do interact with photons of sufficient energy - they can scatter at the quarks inside the neutron.

Can you please explain this effect in some detail?

 

[PeterDonis]

AFAIK neutron stars are not counted as dark matter, but as ordinary matter

That's correct. See below.

I just can't understand why a photon would interact with a neutron when according to the standard model it is a gauge boson whose interactions are exclusively limited to charged particles

Neutrons are composite objects; they are composed of three quarks. So even though a neutron is electrically neutral, it can still interact with photons because the quarks inside it are electrically charged. For example, the neutron has a nonzero magnetic moment. This is really no more mysterious than the fact that electrically neutral atoms can emit and absorb photons.

I don't think that decay occurs in a neutron star

Correct; neutrons in bound states don't undergo the weak interaction decay, only free neutrons do. (Actually, that's not quite true--there are atomic nuclei that undergo beta decay, which means one of the neutrons inside the nucleus undergoes the weak interaction decay. But that happens because the neutron is very loosely bound in such nuclei. Neutrons in a neutron star are more tightly bound.)

I thought that such invisible, yet massive objects would qualify as dark matter.

There is probably some variation in terminology, but from the standpoint of cosmology and modeling the universe as a whole, the key characteristic of dark matter is not just that it's not visible now, but that it never was visible; i.e., it has always been dark since the early universe. Neutron stars, even if they themselves are not easily visible, are formed from matter that is easily visible (stars). So we can estimate how many neutron stars there are from looking at visible matter--watching how often supernovas happen, etc. (Also, of course, we have detectable evidence of some neutron stars, since that's what pulsars are--see below.) The only way we have of estimating how much dark matter there is is by its gravitational effect.

The argument I've seen simply states that neutron stars are hot so they emit blackbody radiation in the x ray range

This is true when they first form, but AFAIK they cool fairly rapidly. However, there are still ways for neutron stars to emit radiation: pulsars are neutron stars that emit beams of radio waves because they are spinning rapidly and have magnetic fields.

 

[mfb]

Can you please explain this effect in some detail?

Similar to deep inelastic scattering, just more direct. I don't know if it has a special name as the photons need such a high energy that it is impractical to study it in a lab. It was relevant in the very early universe, and above ~200 MeV the energy is sufficient to create new hadrons.

 

[Chalnoth]

Would "uncharged Hadrons held together by g..." be little clumps of neutrons?

I just read they have @ 600s lifetime. Are there other kinds of uncharged hadrons?

Yes, but they all have much shorter lifetimes.

The only long-lived particles with no electric charge in the standard model are neutrinos and photons. Neutrinos are too light, and photons have no mass at all.

Something very much like a neutrino but with more mass would work well as a dark matter particle, however.

I'd appreciate a clarification of just how likely it is, given this new upper constraint on self interaction, that DM is truly non self interacting. I mean is this number truly small/large or just bounding off the normal end. If this stuff is at once non self interacting, though differentiated in space time (identifiably somewhere and not somewhere) then one implication is that it is everywhere in space time only itself - entangled, non-local.

It narrows the available parameter space a little bit.

 

[PWiz]

the key characteristic of dark matter is not just that it's not visible now, but that it never was visible; i.e., it has always been dark since the early universe

That proves to be a very important distinguishing factor in the definition. It considerably alters my view of dark matter. I guess this means that the only possible candidates for non-baryonic dark matter are some hypothetical particles. Thanks.

 

[Lord Crc]

How does their cross-section limit compare to that of neutrinos?

 

[Jimster41]

I see there is an experiment ongoing (ice cube) that is looking for certain kinds of neutrinos. I had heard of it a while back but didn't think it was related at all to the search for DM.

Are there any other major experiments or studies going on in the DM effort? Is Dark Matter thought to be a component of the dynamics of a gravitational system like a planetary disk or ring system, or is it just way way too weak and diffuse for even a hope of detection at those scales?I've read (tried to read) a couple things in the past about what dynamic structures in Galaxies are hard to explain from visible matter, something to do with density waves in spiral arms. I got all bothered about how well we understand things like Saturn's Rings, whether or not a system like those, might display exotic g-field effects, like DM or g-waves. Is the eLISA experiment expected to add to the DM data?

 

[wabbit]

There was a discussion about this in pf not long ago, apparently it is diffuse - around galaxies it forms a halo rather than something more structured, and at the scale of the solar system that would be just uniform. At large scales however my understanding is that it forms the filaments etc. that are the scaffolding of large scale features in the distribution of galaxies.

 

[Lord Crc]

Are there any other major experiments or studies going on in the DM effort?

There are several direct searches, if that what you're asking for. I have a buddy who's involved with the DEAP-3600, due to start data acquisition soon.

As an aside, the detector itself is a piece of art in my humble opinion, see the image on the Wikipedia page :)

 

[wabbit]

As an aside, the detector itself is a piece of art in my humble opinion, see the image on the Wikipedia page :)

Beautiful. (I hope they wouldn't feel insulted if I said it looks a bit like a huge virus?)

 

[Lord Crc]

Beautiful. (I hope they wouldn't feel insulted if I said it looks a bit like a huge virus?)

Hopefully they know what they've created

Here's a short article, including pictures of the assembly: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/shh-deap-is-hunting-dark-matter

As a piece of small trivia, my buddy used the open-source physically based renderer I've been involved with to determine that the "weird" patterns they saw in their light guides were to be expected due to reflection of the components and not due any issues with production or assembly.

 

[Jimster41]

As an aside, the detector itself is a piece of art in my humble opinion, see the image on the Wikipedia page :)

Yeah, that is so cool. I get a sense of vertigo when I see something man-made really trying (hard) to arrange itself around the infinitesimal, take on the appearance of... familiar natural things. It's obviously not a coincidence IMHO.

I subscribed up to that Symmetry eMag (for free!)

 

[wabbit]

things like Saturn's Rings, whether or not a system like those, might display (...) or g-waves.

To me that would be surprising: gravitational waves are very hard to detect with sophisticated purpose-built instruments, so for them to have a detectable macroscopic effect there (at the same distance to the source as we are) seems difficult to imagine.

 

[Jimster41]

To me that would be very surprising: gravitational waves are very hard to detect with sophisticated purpose-built instruments, so for them to have a detectable macroscopic effect there (at the same distance to the source as we are) seems difficult to imagine.

I can totally imagine you are right. I don't have much concrete to base my intuition on scale-wise. I was just struck (totally naively) by the apparent similarity of orbital ring structures, like Saturn's, Neptune's and others to Poisson spot interference phenomena. Complete coincidence, surely maybe (really?).

Maybe such relationships could be easily ruled out on scale arguments. But just going from my sense of how human beings sometimes miss things that are right in front of us, I can imagine there is something mysterious in the way that periodicity appears in familiar orbital systems, that we just think of as "well that's just what gravity does", understandably missing some sense of astonishment - that it does what it does and not something else, a fact with implications. Just reading that interview featured today about the black holes discovered in galactic globular clusters (strange orbital phenomena in their own right), the professor described disagreement or uncertainty about why the mass to light ratio of the clusters looked the way it did. That depressed me a little, because it gave me a sense that such questions are really a long way from being answered - and as PWiz said, I'd like to know before I kick the bucket...

anyway, drifting off topic. Sorry. Fun stuff.

 

[wabbit]

There's a whole field of study in such dynamics based as far as I know on Newtonian mechanics (with perhaps a tiny bit of GR corrections in some cases), its complex enough (chaotic in many aspects) as it is, I'm not sure very small corrections due to exotic effects woud have a significant effect here.

http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/astronomy/astronomy-general/solar-system-dynamics