Michael Kieth Adams

Humans have always been real estate developers. Right now we can barely leave the planet, but we will get there. My money is on an elevator to low earth orbit. Not saying at all to stop working on making things better right here. There is plenty to do for everyone. Respectfully, Mike

Mars is fairly easy. A few quintillion dollars and centuries and viola! Venus however is a lady and changing any lady is problematic. First, how do you cool the hottest planet in the solar system? Shade? Probably a good first step. How about rings of dust between Venus and the sun. Then there is the super thick poisonous atmosphere. Cooling first. Maybe eclipses to create cool spots in the atmosphere What do we do about the dang clouds? How do you get sulfuric acid to condense? Dust maybe? It sounds easy but in many ways poison, pressure, and heat could be as troubling as near vacuum, low pressure and permaganates. Got any ideas?

Thank you for your explanation but I keep hearing the phrase that we know of in my head. We have recently discovered that apparently space can expand faster than the speed of light and that two linked particles can somehow communicate instantly. Just thos e two things must clear a lot of bets from the table. Maybe dark matter accumulates around black holes. Maybe there are dark matter fairies who sweep it into piles for later use. Probably not, but the universe is bigger and stranger than we know. Mike

I just read that a group has discovered clumps of dark matter using lensing effects. Implications I know norguess not. If I understand what I read yesterday, dark matter does accumulate or appears to do so. Wouldn’t that mean that it must be giving off something? To accumulate it must lose angular momentum and kinetic energy and produce what? Dark matter and dark energy are a huge part of our world about which we know very little. We do know how visible matter acts there must be a way to deduce more about our invisible universe.

Again I missed your main points. Sorry. Dark matter does accumulate in or near galaxies doesn’t it? If I remember correctly, the Milky Way does not have enough matter to hold together, hence dark matter. Gravity is a weak force, maybe it does not have the same effect on dark matter as visible matter but instead a similar one. If dark matter had a gravitic effect on itself there should be gravity Lensing effects all over the place with no visible causes. We have demonstrated that two particle can be linked in such a way that what happens to one happens to the other. Doesn’t this imply faster than light? The universe is wonderful and weird. I’m starting to ramble. Sorry and thank you.

Andrew, thanks for paying attention to a curious layman. If I remember correctly electromagnetism is expressed by an electric wave and a magnetic one at 90 degrees to each other. What if dark matter emitted something equivalent at different angles. Would we be able to detect it? 95% of the mass of the entire universe sounds like gravity has to have ( I know, physics does not like he words has to) behave in a similar manner as visible matter. Does gravity lensing occur where no visible matter exists? If not there should be some connection between visible matter and dark matter. I’m thinking that it may be that visible matter follows dark matter rather than the reverse. I would expect there to be a difference between spiral galaxies and more diffuse ones with dark matter following the shapes of the galaxies it is close to. If dark matter follows the contours of visible matter shouldn’t it be giving off something even if we can’t detect it. I hope I have said something that makes sense. Thanks. Mike

I have no idea what that last bit might mean either ( pardon my typing mistakes, cataracts make it difficult for me to read). I’m surprised by one ninth the mass of ceres though. Wouldn’t that indicate that gravity does not have the same effect on dark matter as it does on regular matter? I would think that dark matter would follow he same paths as normal matter if gravity acts on it as it does for visible matter. If our measurements were all skewed by the presence of undetected ( except by mass) dark matter, how would we know? If dark matter had some quality that made it only detectable by gravity, couldn’t it be hiding everywhere? What would the super colliders results look like if we could examine its results using gravity. We believe in our guts that if we can’t see it some way it can’t be true, but we also know that that is not the way things are.

I’ve got two ideas, first, could gravitational lending be used to determine the actual shape of galaxies including dark matter? The other is that dark matter is gravitational, it has gravity and is affected by gravity, what if all our measures are off by 95%?There must be dark matter in our sun and in the core of the earth which means our measurements almost have to be off. What if dark matter exists at an angle (wrong term, I know) such as to make it only measured by gravity?

Mars was apparently hit by something very large. Could it have been a moon? Could the tidal effects of that moon been enough to keep the core liquid? Would that have been enough to keep an electromagnetic shield going? Just a thought.

Thanks again. This has been a whole lot of fun. We keep trying to believe that we are “Normal”. When we apparently are not. We live on second or third generation planets which are apparently quite rare. Maybe that’s why there is no one to talk to yet. Maybe the key to faster than light communication just hasn’t occurred to anybody here yet. Who knows, maybe Earth cats are the Galactic experts in experimental gravity. I love cats but I sort of doubt that they are. We think, therefore we screw up. Again, thank all of you. You have taught me a lot.

Thanks to everyone. Just because we can’t figure out how to do this does not mean it cannot be done. Eventually we should encounter a radio using civilization, but it may be that entanglement based communication may be the rule with radio being the rarity. We are human. Impossible just means we haven’t figured it out yet, give us a century or two.

Why radio telescopes fail to encounter signs of civilization. Using radio signals for communication does not make sense. Long distance conversations become next to impossible using radio, but using some form of communication based on entangled particles should be instantaneous, and would quickly displace radio communications. We hear nothing because we are listening for the wrong things. Just a thought.

Thankyou!

If dark matter has gravity, it bends space. We should be able to see bends in light resulting from this. We probably wouldn’t be able to see it, but we might be able to know where it is.

Things do not have to be moving at the same velocities in the same space. I know that the idea of an explosion is not even close to the reality of the Big Bang, but if you looked at the tracks of an explosion, some would end close to the center point and others farther away. Perhaps the far parts that we see are parts that have slowed down enough for us to see them. The world around us seems homogenous, but we know there are parts of it that we cannot see. Is the dark universe homogenous? We should be able to tell by gravitational effects. Parts of the universe around us move at different speeds. We believe that moving very fast changes the effects of time. If dark matter were moving faster than light it might not behave as we expect. Viewpoint might determine what we see. I ask again, would we be able to see something moving faster than light? I suspect not. We know that the universe is very different from what we see, maybe it depends on how fast things are moving.

The universe is not the same everywhere. The early universe was quite a bit different than it is now. The early expansion was faster than light, it is slower than that now. Would we be able to see something moving faster than light? Maybe parts of the universe expand at different speeds in the same space. Maybe dark energy and dark matter are parts of local space moving faster than light. Thanks for reading and thinking about my ideas. I really appreciate it. Mike

I know what you are talking about but the fact is what we see far away happened long ago, what happens right here in our region of space time is slower, was fast is slow, slowing down. I know the balloon illustration but far away things move faster than close ones. Long ago things fast recent things slower, slowing down ( not stopping, yet). I’m sure there is a flaw in my logic but where?

The more distance away from us something is, the faster it moves away from us. Things are moving slower near to us. Am I wrong to believe that the huge speeds we see happened long ago and the fact that things near us are slower has to mean that things are slowing down. Closer is more recent, far away is long ago. Do I misunderstand ?

I am obviously far from expert, however I don’t understand what inherent properties of plasma would divide it into two lobes. If I got it right they are saying it has to do with temperature differences though I’m curious as to why one doesn’t see this in teardrop structures here on earth? Of course my idea has problems also, why would a companion object to the sun, be in the perfect place to view it? I know that things like that happen but not very often. Would it be possible for the sun to drag something around like a dog on a leash? I wouldn’t think so. Perhaps it is the magnetic field of the sun, being dragged out by the galactic wind that produces two lobes?

If what they are saying is correct, then the two lobed pattern should be present around other stars. Is it?

It was a NASA report on the suns tail.

The solar system leaves a tail behind it as it orbits the galaxy. The tail apparently splits in two. Could this indicate an unseen companion to the sun with a very strong magnetic field? m

I do love the science channel. They were discussing the shape of the suns trail. The image they used seemed to have a sphere shape with two tails from the sun. There was nothing visible in the center of the sphere and I do realize that it was a created image but if it was even close a magnetic field from a small companion object might explain it. Just a thought.

Subscribe to scientific American, I know not a lot on astronomy but what there is is good. Also science is interesting. Subscribe to astronomy periodicals also but do not be one dimensional. Life does not just have one side.

This has been a lot of fun. I am amazed that a tired old fat man who knows a little science can spark such wonderful discussions and I am more amazed at how much of these comments I actually understand. I am beginning to think however that at least part of everything is the parts of the equation we don’t know. We talk about mass when 90% or more is missing. We are bailing out the same boat when we speak of dark energy. Now that we have studied some other solar systems we should be beginning to have some idea of the mass of planets left over from dead stars. If I’ve got it right, the universe has not been around long enough for that to be the source of all dark matter, but it should make up some of it. We should have some idea by now how much. We know about how much dark matter there should be, we know the effects of dark energy, how powerful it must be, how long it has been acting. There is so much that we don’t know. We have pride of our knowledge but we need to remember, a very few years ago liquid water was rare, now we find it all over the place. We haven’t seen it yet but we are pretty sure there is a ninth planet. We know about how big it must be and roughly where but that’s about it. This is a very exciting time to be alive. Thank you all so much,Mike.