Michael Kieth Adams

Baryonic matter, if I got it right, is essentially subatomic particles which are often unassembled atoms. What makes the bits that they are made of come together? Could they form clouds and have gravities effects? How could they be detected? I think about neutrinos, we barely know that they exist, what else is out there, the movement of the galaxies tells us that there is something, maybe leftovers from universe building.

This would probably not explain the total mass of unseen matter but it might explain some of it. Our universe is apparently about thirteen billion years old. Almost every star that we examine seems to have planets. How many stars have lived out their lives in thirteen billion years? Every star that dies may leave one or more planets loose in the galaxy. Huge masses of gas from dying stars must be out there. Also there must have been a huge amount of matter that never became stars. Sub atomic particles that never became atoms should also be out there . Anyone have a guess as to how much? We’ve been looking for strange exotic stuff but the unseen matter may just be universal leftovers from universe building processes. Just another silly idea. Mike

When my Grandfather was born, flying machines were balloons. He lived to see men on the moon. We live amongst flights of fancy, from television to cell phones. We are only limited by our imaginations. A super volcano eruption could kill us all tomorrow and there are quite a few of them. We have changed the climate significantly, we have dramatically changed life in our oceans and have been doing so since the Middle Ages. We can have an effect on planetary scales. We are a long way from going to Mars but I believe we will get there. We are a stubborn bunch. Are there difficulties? You bet! Next to impossible has been our middle name for a million years, but we have gone from hand axes to cell phones in a hundred thousand years. Next to no time at all in the history of our planet. Humans are amazing animals, don’t bet against us.

When I was born airplanes were a relatively new technology, now robot drones fly Martian skies. Humans have changed the climate of our world, not on purpose of course. The Mongols did it by killing a few millions. We currently use fossil fuels. The Earth is a delicate basket, and our survival on it is always iffy. Volcanism has almost done us in, at least once. Climate change has probably come close a time or two also. We are fragile eggs in a very changeable basket. We need to expand to other baskets. We do not currently have the technology to do this, we do have the imagination to figure out what we need to do to do it. People are already planning an elevator to space even though we do not quite have strong enough materials to make one. Space habitats may be the way to go but apparently Mars was once similar to earth. Making it so again would be a very exciting project. I am not saying that proper care for our planet should not occur, that is an obligation for all intelligent life, but so is making life of all kinds safer by finding it new places to exist. Mars is a good opportunity we cannot afford to ignore. I am an old man, I will not live to see any of this, but I believe we can do it if we try.

Not comments but comets dang my eyesight, I can’t wait to get these consarned cataracts removed!

Well here is another wild and crazy idea. The main problem with Mars is not producing an atmosphere but in keeping one. Mars does not have much of a magnetic field. The theory that made the most sense to me is the one that there was a huge impact that had an effect on the internal structure of the planet, thus no magnetic field , no volcanism, little atmosphere. What if we built Mars several moons in stable orbits. By playing billiards with the asteroids. We send thousands of small asteroids to Mars orbit where they are placed in stable orbits that maximize tidal flexing in Mars. I know that this is a very long term project, but we can start work on building the atmosphere by increasing the heat by means of orbiting mirrors carved in thin sheets from metallic asteroids and placed in orbit to heat up Mars frozen oceans. We might also arrange for a few comments to land on Mars. Bacteria can be used to adjust the gasses to suit us once there are enough of them. Admittedly we can’t do this now, but We build robots that do our bidding for years at a time. We just need to change. Their purpose a bit and set them to it. The purpose of the moons is to get the core of Mars moving again to create a protective magnetic field. The only other idea I can come up with is an orbiting ring of magnets but I haven’t been able to think of an arrangement that would protect the planets atmosphere. Also I think that volcanism is important in maintaining one. This is definitely pie in the sky thinking, but what better place to put pie?!? Big dreams are the most satisfying when achieved.p. Looking forward to all the reasons why it can’t and shouldn’t be done, and maybe a few on how to do it better.

There may not be a ninth planet but something has changed expected orbits in the area. As to a large planet not forming in this part of the solar system, current theories have the large planets moving all over the place and if I have understood correctly, the math works better with another large planet which was apparently expelled. Maybe not so much! The Romanians may be correct but if we look we will learn something even if not what we were looking for. All knowledge is valuable and of worth. Thank you all for this wonderful discussion. Michael K. Adams

It has also occurred to me that a passing object might have disturbed the orbits and then gone on its merry way. Be pretty sad if we wind up looking for something no longer there! All knowledge has value.

I just reread the responses. I have cataracts and need to use a magnifying glass to see better(yes I also use 2.5 magnifying glasses but they only do so much) the member from Serbia, if I understood him correctly said that a wide view might overpower a relatively small blockage, but isn’t this how we find exoPlanets? There would be differences in light intensity even if not a clear shadow. I know we are talking about significant expense but this is our home, we should know about the back rooms.

I can’t believe so many people commented so fast. The area is large and the chances of a star being blocked by Planet X might be remote but a long distance or perhaps deeper view should be full of objects and blank spots might be spotted. I know that there are few telescopes capable of this available. I also realize that Planet X might be multiple planetoids, or something else entirely, but I would think a planet would be more likely. Infrared might work but there would be a huge area to look through. Maybe the best idea is to get better measurements of orbits and narrow things down a lot. That would also not be cheap, but it would be cool to figure out exactly where it has to be and have it be there!

Document the area of space where we think it might be, multiple times. At some point it should block out a star or other astronomical object. There might be quite a lot of orbiting junk in similar orbits but once one knows a target we should be able to tell if it is something else or a planet. There are probably tons of scientists already doing this.

Thanks for my introduction to quantum perdition! I have long contended that the universe depends on how it is perceived. Point of view is vital. Shroedingers cat told me so.

We humans truly do not see very well. If the production of a photon or a neutrino are both possibilities light may be an expression of the energy in the electric and the magnetic waves. What keeps photons photons as they bounce around the inside of the sun? Why do they not break down to particle and antiparticle? There must be some process that limits or prevents this. Light slows down in different mediums, maybe the speed of light in plasma does not allow energy levels high enough to produce particles and antiparticles. If not then shouldn’t the energy of the interior of the sun indicate particle and antiparticle collision? I’m going to stop here. This is fun!

XThanks Andrew. It sounds as if we are talking about basically energy and matter as conditions of each other, the “ matterness” of a photon might have todo with how we observe it. Do we change its nature when we measure it? I’m writing this about three am. Right now, ideas float around me like clouds in the sky, or vultures flying. Because of my cataracts vultures will disappear in an otherwise normal appearing sky and reappear out of the clear blue elsewhere. I can’t help feeling that we are often looking at the universe with cataracts invisibly blocking our vision here and there. Have you heard of the plans to send tiny light sails towing tiny instrument packages to our neighbor stars? All powered by photons! Be well my friends. Mike

I’d like to really thank everyone. I have cataracts which cannot be treated at the present time, and thanks to rhabdomyelitus, covid 19, and congestive heart failure I am having to learn to walk again at seventy three. Thank you for taking my mind off things!

Thank you. A photon moves at the speed of light. I cannot imagine it being anything like normal matter. It moves too fast. What if it is not really matter at all but an artifact of an electric wave and a magnetic one at right angles to each other? I feel that we may be putting things in the wrong boxes. Might a photon be a kind of wave front. acting like a particle rather than an actual one?

First of all. Please forgive any spelling problems. I suffer from severe cataracts and often have trouble seeing the keyboard of my iPad. Here is an idea I have had and wondered if it has any merit. What if a photon both does and does not have mass. Maybe a sort of Schrödinger cat type of thing. Light is a particle and a wave depending on how you look at it. What if it is actually both and neither at the same time!?! A photon of light can transfer momentum, can a wave of light do the same? I am sure I am making all kinds of mistakes in logic here but what if momentum, instead of being a property of an object moving through space was actually a property of space time when it associates with mass. I’m probably saying the same thing two different ways, but what if I’m not? We try to put everything in its correct box but some things won’t stay, ie light, photon, wave. Maybe the problem with Newtonian slash quantum physics is less actual and more an exercise in perspective?!?

The idea that isolated clumps of dark matter are around black holes is probably not always true. There should be a lot of objects with a lot of gravity that do not give off light, but there should be some that do form around black holes. It should be possible to predict what might happen and get some results. Of course we are talking about studying objects that cannot be seen but only inferred. Seems like it would be easier if we had a closer clump to study. Now that we know that they exist, maybe we can find one. Mike

Andrew, again thank you but dark matter in clumps, however they formed, almost certainly collides with itself. Probably doesn’t happen much but it should happen some, and it should give off something. I know that even the dark matter is not very dense but collisions should occur sometimes, however rarely. Would there be a difference between a collision with other dark matter and a collision with visible matter? I would think that regions near black holes would be good places to look. I would also look at clumps of dark matter away from galaxies. I’ve got a feeling they form around black holes which we also can’t see. Hope I have made some sense. Mike

That’s what I thought. Dark matter clumps which means it has to lose momentum and should mean that it gives something up. Have Imissunderstood something? Mike

I have heard estimates of 90% and 80% for dark matters mass in the universe. That seems to be quite a lot of stuff. Does a diffuse cloud of dark matter around the Milky Way constitute enough to hold things together? If all this mass lies ( mostly) outside the visible milky way why doesn’t the milky way get pulled apart? Again, dart matter does accumulate in clumps. Doesn’t that mean that it has lost momentum and should be giving off something. We already know that what we see is not all there is. Could that be true of electromagnetic radiation as well? I enjoy this a lot. Thank you all. Mike

I haveto hope that no one’s feelings have been hurt. We all have reasons why we feel and believe what we do. As the joke goes, walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, then who cares! They are a mile away and you’ve got their shoes! Grab them shoes and take off! Mike

The highway in question was in the 1980s and the computer basically controlled stoplights. We’ve come a ways since then. Weather satellites help everyone with a radio on the planet. GPS helps every ship on the planet, none of us can know what trick or bit of software used on Mars might be adapted to a terrestrial use, but we can be sure from past experience that they will. Science has been a part of the human experience since before we became human. No we can’t terraform anything just yet, but there is no knowing when we might begin. Our problems here are deep and profound but that is no reason not to try and understand the universe around us. You might say that the study of ants is useless. But ants outweigh us by quite a lot and are probably more important to ecology than we are. We do not know enough to say what knowledge might be vital or lead to important forms of knowledge. We MUST learn everything we possibly can, if for no other reason than we can. I have no certainty of being absolutely right about anything, but I’d claim about 90% on this one. ,Mike

There is a seventeen mile stretch of highway in L A that was computerized using technology developed for space. The savings in reduced accidents and time saved amounts to billions. How many miles of computerized highways are there? Also how many lives saved by space medicine. The space race has paid for itself many times over. Mike

I actually started with terraforming Mars but it disappeared somehow. Oh well, as a computer person I am an excellent gardener! Venus however is closer than Mars and has better( or worse) solar power options. Themain problem with Mars is lack of a descent magnetic field. Either we need to kick start Mars ( liquid?) core somehow or build one, rings of magnets in orbit maybe? Then we need an atmosphere. I think icebergs from Saturn plus maybe a few comets. There is some evidence of extremely salty temporarily liquid water ( ? ) on the surface of Mars. Might be more in lava tubes and maybe at the bottom of Mars Grand Canyon. Then there is the permanganate. Titan might be easier but the low gravity could be a killer.