Fermi and dark matter

[Michael Mozina]

To be honest I don't know how many have read the book. I do know that most of the Cosmology department had not read Einstein's initial treatise on General Relativity and that most of the Biology department had not read Darwin's On the Origin of Species (there was a survey).

Really? I've actually read those presentations. Very Interesting.

Quite what that proves about the theories viability I do not know.

Well, I tend to like to go to the horse's mouth when trying to understand a new concept or theory. Maybe it's a personality quirk, but that seems like a good place to start. You're right of course that it is not a necessity to read Darwin to understand evolutionary theory, and Einstein would hardly recognize his GR (blunder?) theory in it's latest incarnation inside a Lambda-CDM theory.

I am not sure. Do you have a good explanation please?

Careful, it's a 160MB compilation of Birkeland's life work. You'll find your answers in his terella experiments around page 600 along with images of of coronal loops that he simulated in his lab.

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/birkeland.pdf

No. It is a requirement for a valid theory to make predications in line with what we observe in carefully undertaken experiments.

Well, we do see annihilation signatures coming from a "cloud" at the core of our own galaxy. That 'annihilation cloud' is something that Alfven "predicted" and he called it "ambiplasma". It is simply incorrect of Wiki to claim such signatures have not been observed. They have. We can debate about what causes these gamma rays, but there is no debate about these annihilation signatures being observed.

Which it fails to do on a number of points that the standard model can.

The standard model does its magic only by employing three different forms of metaphysical leaps of faith in inflation, dark energy and exotic forms of dark matter, none of which have empirical physical support. From a skeptics point of view, that's just not the "accomplishment" that it seems to be if you're a proponent of the theory.

Because it has an extremely detailed and ironed out mathematical background that dovetails nicely into the existing theory and has been hammered at the edges to fit the observational evidence. It is far from handwaving.

It was 'hammered at the edges to *FORCE IT TO FIT* the observational evidence. None of the so called "properties' of these various metaphysical entities was ever demonstrated in a lab. In fact they cannot ever be demonstrated in lab for the most part because evidently inflation is dead and gone and space never "expands" on Earth. The only thing with any "hope" of empirical support is the notion of exotic matter.

You may not like the original premise but it is a detailed effort, not a back of the envelope calculation and I think it unfair to misrepresent it as such.

Prior to say 12 years ago, BB proponents "predicted" a decelerating universe. There was still a debate as to whether the galaxy would experience a "big crunch" or whether it would continue to expand forever. Then one fine day they realized that all these years and years and years of meticulous calculations had utterly failed to predict an accelerating universe. Did they toss out the theory? Of course not. Someone simply invented a new metaphysical fudge factor and "dark energy" was born. Suddenly "dark energy" makes up 70+ percent of the entire physical galaxy. You'll have to pardon me if I don't have a lot of faith in your detailed calculations. I've seen them fail so many times now I've lost count.

Can you explain, without inflation please,

homogeneity/horizon
flatness
lack of magnetic monopoles

(yes yes I know some items require the assumption of a "big bang" if you will but I didnt think you were questioning that per se).

http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/A...An Intoductory Exposition - Hannes Alfven.pdf

I have no idea why you feel it is the least bit important to explain why something does *not* exist (monopoles).

I would dearly love to hear more about this solar theory of yours though as it seems to go against everything I have learnt.. perhaps you have discussed it in another thread?

It went against everything I was ever taught too.

You can click on my sig line by Birkeland to go to a website I created to explain the Birkeland solar model. FYI the solar model in the published papers uses a different core than the one that Birkeland discussed.

http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+mozina/0/1/0/all/0/1

I have in fact discussed Birkeland's solar theory here (and virtually everywhere in cyberspace) in another thread but I'm not sure which thread it was or where the solar conversation started. It wasn't a separate thread on a solar model, rather it was mixed together with other EU theories. Perhaps RC will round that link up for you. (I think RC has every EU theory bookmarked and cataloged).

 

[DazzaD]

I have no idea why you feel it is the least bit important to explain why something does *not* exist (monopoles).

Now THAT is interesting for someone who sets so much steed in the electromagnetic force.

 

[ben m]

The term "lumpy stuff" can be applied to asteroids, pebbles, clumps of dense plasma. MACHO's, stars, planets, etc. It's not limited to a single thing or even solid matter IMO. Even a plasma distribution process that isn't uniform is likely to allow some material to "pass on through" the collision process.

No, no, no---plasmas are quite strongly coupled and do not "pass through" each other, even if one part is much denser than the other. Different densities will affect the details of the inelastic collision (shock parameters, etc.) but not the fact that it's inelastic.

What is the likelihood in your opinion that we can directly observe a star or planet, or any smaller object in the equipment used in that lensing study?

Read the lensing studies---they tell you exactly what they're sensitive to and what they are not.

As far as I know matter has always existed, and IMO stars are mostly made of iron and nickel, not hydrogen and helium. The huge metal excess is covered up by a photosphere, a chromosphere and a corona.

Didn't you say a page or two ago that you "don't disagree with stellar interior hydrostatics"? Do you have a hydrostatic solution that explains how a 2x10^30 kg ball of iron and nickel with a 4x10^26 W luminosity maintains a radius of 7x10^8 meters? Is that solution stable against convection at the surface?

Again, MM, if you're utterly uninterested in numerical disagreement between your pet model and our observations, as your iron sun thing seems to indicate, then of course you're uninterested in the dark matter hypothesis and nothing will ever change your mind.

 

[Reality Check]

So explaining material that "passes through" a collision process requires no new forms of matter. Occum is no longer your friend.

But science is !

The small amount of matter found in observed intracluster objects is not enough to explain the blue blobs (dark matter).

The huge amount of matter in your "lumpy stuff" is easy to refute as in the points that you are ignoring. I will split those into another post.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Now THAT is interesting for someone who sets so much steed in the electromagnetic force.

As far as I know, monopoles have never existed and have nothing to do with the EM field. In fact Gauss's "law" would be overturned if they did exist. From my perspective it's like expecting me to provide an explanation as to why unicorns do *not* exist in nature.

 

[Reality Check]

After about 3 months we have got Michael Mozina's definitive answer to a question about the colliding intracluster medium in colliding galactic clusters: "Lumpy stuff"!

First asked 11 November 2009
Michael Mozina's assertion is that dark matter is "lumpy stuff".

This "lumpy stuff" must provide the excess mass that is seen in the gravitational lensing measurements of the Bullet Cluster, MACS J0025.4-1222 and Abell 520. This is about 40 galaxies for each visible galaxy.

Astromomers have already ruled out MACHOs (one form of "lumpy stuff" according to MM) as a significant part of dark matter. They can be at most 8% of the dark matter in a galaxy.

Intracluster space contains the ICM. It also contains intracluster stars, planetary nebulae and globular clusters that ae likely to have been removed from galaxies by gravitational forces. These visible intracluster objects emit 10-20% of the stellar light. Being charitable this is 20% of the mass of a galaxy.

So far we have "lumpy stuff" giving 0.28 of a galaxy per visible galaxy - ony 39 galaxies to go!

Maybe "lumpy stuff" is dust? But Far-Infrared Emission from Intracluster Dust in Abell Clusters has measured no dust in 5 clusters and a low inferred dust mass in another.

That leaves the other candidates that MM has mentioned for "lumpy stuff": rocks and black holes.
Michael Mozina's assertion leads to the conclusion that the mass in galactic clusters must consist of:

• 2% in galaxies (mostly H & He).
• 14% in the ICM (mostly H & He).
• 84% of "lumpy stuff" which seems to be rocks (mostly C, O and Fe) or black holes in the intracluster space.

Michael Mozina may (or may not) know that C, O and Fe are created in stars by fusion, i.e. H and He are converted to C, O and Fe.
Michael Mozina may (or may not) know that black holes are the remains of stars.

In either case stars are needed to produce his "lumpy stuff".

This means that sometime in the past the number of stars were much more than there were in these galactic clusters. So if astronomers look further away, i.e. further back into time, galaxies will (according to you) become more numerous or bigger to contain the ~40 times increase in the number of stars.

Michael Mozina:
Why do astronomers not see that the number of stars increases manyfold as they look back in time?

And more locally:
If his claim and its concequence are correct then there are about 40 times the mass of the Milky way in "lumpy stuff" between the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies, e.g. the Andromeda Galaxy.

• The "lumpy stuff" is not MACHOs which by definition are in the galatic halo.
• The "lumpy stuff" is not black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs or very faint red dwarfs since these are ruled out by micro-lensing.

That leaves smaller stuff as "lumpy stuff", e.g. unassociated planets, rocks or dust. If there was only a little bit of this stuff then it would not have been detected (yet!). But he is implying that there are essentially 40 Milky Ways of "lumpy stuff" between us and the Andromeda Galaxy.

But the Andromeda Galaxy is well observed.
Michael Mozina:
Why have astronomers not noticed 40 Milky Ways of "lumpy stuff"?

 

[Reality Check]

As far as I know, monopoles have never existed and have nothing to do with the EM field. In fact Gauss's "law" would be overturned if they did exist. From my perspective it's like expecting me to provide an explanation as to why unicorns do *not* exist in nature.

To be more exact:
Monopoles have never been observed. They may have existed in the past or may still exist or may have never existed.

If they exist they have something to to with the EM field in the same sense as charged particles like electrons have something to do with the EM field.

The laws of electromagnetism are usually presented as if magnetic charge was zero. This leads to the familiar Maxwell's equations, including that Gauss's law for electric charges and magnetic charges are different. The gradient of an electric field is related to the charge density while the gradient of a magnetic field is zero.

The laws of electromagnetism can be formulated with a non-zero magnetic charge. This leads to nicely symmetric equations. Gauss's law would not be overturned - its full expression would be used instead of the more limited version with no magnetic charge.

 

[Michael Mozina]

No, no, no---plasmas are quite strongly coupled and do not "pass through" each other, even if one part is much denser than the other. Different densities will affect the details of the inelastic collision (shock parameters, etc.) but not the fact that it's inelastic.

Do you have a reference for that statement?

I have a really hard time believing that a dense plasma of iron ions that has three to four hundred times the number ions of a hydrogen plasma moving the other direction is going to immediately flatten out and that none of the iron ions will "pass through'.

Even in that solar system scenario, it's not just the star the will "pass through" the collision process, it's likely to be all the interplanetary plasma around the star too because that plasma is strongly coupled to the star's surface and heliosphere.

Didn't you say a page or two ago that you "don't disagree with stellar interior hydrostatics"?

Not necessarily, no. I can't say for sure what the sun's core is made of. I certainly can't rule out hydrogen fusion as the primary power source even if the sun does in fact have a "crust" of heavy materials. I definitely can't "rule it out", nor can I take my handy Occum's razor to any portion of current solar theory. Whatever reservations I have about current solar theory, none of them allow me to rule out standard theory, nor rule out hydrogen fusion.

Do you have a hydrostatic solution that explains how a 2x10^30 kg ball of iron and nickel with a 4x10^26 W luminosity maintains a radius of 7x10^8 meters? Is that solution stable against convection at the surface?

No, I do not which is why I can't rule out standard theory.

Again, MM, if you're utterly uninterested in numerical disagreement between your pet model and our observations, as your iron sun thing seems to indicate, then of course you're uninterested in the dark matter hypothesis and nothing will ever change your mind.

I have certainly never said that I was "utterly uninterested" in numerical disagreements. In fact during the last conversation on Birkeland's solar model, I thought that Tubbythin made a pretty strong argument against a fission power source with his neutrino arguments.

Numerical disagreements however are rarely if ever used to "falsify" a specific cosmology model. For instance, when the numerical disagreement arose between a prediction of deceleration and observation in BB theory, BB theory (as a whole) was not "abandoned" based on that disagreement. It was simply "modified" accordingly.

Some numerical presentation are simply unverifiable and unfalsifiable as presented. The claim "Fermi sees gamma rays from SUSY particle annihilation" is a case in point. I can't refer to any actual empirical data to verify or falsify any part of it. I simply have to "have faith" that:

A) some exotic particle that has never been observed actually exists "out there" somewhere.
B) said particle is "long lived" and capable of being stable for billions of years.
C) said particles decay at rate x,
D) said particle emit positrons when they decay
E) said positrons annihilate and produce gamma rays.

Only E is something I could actually verify empirically. That doesn't help me verify or falsify A-D.

 

[Michael Mozina]

To be more exact:
Monopoles have never been observed. They may have existed in the past or may still exist or may have never existed.

Ditto on unicorns but I don't feel compelled to "explain" why they do not exist on Earth today.

If they exist they have something to to with the EM field in the same sense as charged particles like electrons have something to do with the EM field.

If they existed it would violate Gauss's law and I have no valid reason to believe that Gauss's law is invalid. If an electric unicorn existed it too might be related to the EM field but why would I try to explain why electric unicorns do not exist?

The laws of electromagnetism can be formulated with a non-zero magnetic charge.

And lots of law of physics could be rewritten if necessary, but I don't worry about 'what ifs' in relationship to any other non-existent entity or their possible effect on any current law of physics. Why would I care about why monopoles do *not* exist? They just don't.

 

[ben m]

Do you have a reference for that statement?

I have a really hard time believing that a dense plasma of iron ions that has three to four hundred times the number ions of a hydrogen plasma moving the other direction is going to immediately flatten out and that none of the iron ions will "pass through'.

It's standard shock physics. The question is not whether the ions collide with one another, the question is whether the "crossing" state---one sea of electrons and ions moving left, superimposed on a sea of electrons and ions moving right---is stable or unstable. It's unstable, and the instability is called a "shock". See, for example, Malcolm Longair "High Energy Astrophysics" vol 1.

As usual, is there any point in my explaining or citing explanations? You don't believe in mainstream plasma physics anyway.

No, I do not which is why I can't rule out standard theory.

I'm not asking you to rule out standard theory; we already know that hydrostatics does not rule out standard theory. Your theory either (a) predicts that the Sun is hydrostatically stable at 7x10^8 meters radius or (b) is incorrect. Which is it? If you think it's (a), show me the hydrostatics---again, this is a standard undergrad-level calculation.

 

[Reality Check]

If they existed it would violate Gauss's law and I have no valid reason to believe that Gauss's law is invalid.

If monoples exist then they will violate the version of Gauss's law (

) that is taught (and in most textbooks). This is derived using the assumption that monoples do not exist. IOW: Gauss's law would be violated because that version of it was derived using an incorrect assumption.

There is a more general definition of Gauss's law that allows for monopoles:

. That Gauss's law will not be violated.

 

[Michael Mozina]

It's standard shock physics. The question is not whether the ions collide with one another, the question is whether the "crossing" state---one sea of electrons and ions moving left, superimposed on a sea of electrons and ions moving right---is stable or unstable. It's unstable, and the instability is called a "shock". See, for example, Malcolm Longair "High Energy Astrophysics" vol 1.

As usual, is there any point in my explaining or citing explanations?

Well, for one thing your "explanation" gives me some insights into your beliefs (in this case that the majority of the iron atoms are not "neutral"). Papers and books tend to be more thorough and I actually do tend to read them and consider them.

You don't believe in mainstream plasma physics anyway.

Actually I just don't believe there is any real physical difference between what the mainstream is now calling "magnetic reconnection" and "circuit reconnection"(a term that is congruent with electrical engineering) or "particle reconnection"(congruent with particle physics). MHD theory is pure physics from my perspective, but "magnetic reconnection" theory is "pseudoscience" according to Alfven, the guy that wrote MHD theory.

I'm not asking you to rule out standard theory; we already know that hydrostatics does not rule out standard theory. Your theory either (a) predicts that the Sun is hydrostatically stable at 7x10^8 meters radius or (b) is incorrect. Which is it? If you think it's (a), show me the hydrostatics---again, this is a standard undergrad-level calculation.

I'm sure it is a standard undergad-level calculation if one *assumes* that the whole thing is one homogeneously mixed ball of hydrogen and helium and few trace heavy elements and no external factors. Its a whole different ball game with a solid crust and EM fields to consider.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyTwLAW-Z8c

 

[Michael Mozina]

Astromomers have already ruled out MACHOs (one form of "lumpy stuff" according to MM) as a significant part of dark matter. They can be at most 8% of the dark matter in a galaxy.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0001272

From the abstract:

Interpreted in the context of a Galactic dark matter halo, consisting partially of compact objects, a maximum likelihood analysis gives a MACHO halo fraction of 20% for a typical halo model with a 95% confidence interval of 8% to 50%.

Evidently not everyone agrees with your stated percentage RC, in fact they arrive at a much higher number. Note that these percentages apply only to objects that are at least .15 solar masses. The micro-lensing technique they are using is incapable of seeing smaller physical objects like asteroids and even planets. You have no idea how much "dark matter" is composed of simple "clumps" of ordinary matter.

 

[ben m]

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0001272

From the abstract:



Evidently not everyone agrees with your stated percentage RC, in fact they arrive at a much higher number. Note that these percentages apply only to objects that are at least .15 solar masses. The micro-lensing technique they are using is incapable of seeing smaller physical objects like asteroids and even planets. You have no idea how much "dark matter" is composed of simple "clumps" of ordinary matter.

That's a nearly ten year old paper; it reports that the MACHO fraction is most likely between 8% and 50% with a best fit at 20%. More recent (and more sensitive) experiments are published, e.g., http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/astro-ph/0607207v2, showing an upper limit of 8% (for the most-easily-detected masses) and ruling out the "all dark matter is MACHOs" for lumps as small as Mars.

So nix your "planets" idea, please; likewise nix brown dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars, etc. I urged you earlier to concentrate on "rocks" (call them asteroids if you like) which indeed are not ruled out by microlensing, and to ask useful questions about their lifetime and IR visibility.

Please note that there are great difficulties in imagining asteroid-like objects made of hydrogen and helium, so you're presumably sticking to the (utterly bizarre IMO) hypothesis of an 80% metal, 18% H, 2% He universe.

 

[Reality Check]

That's a nearly ten year old paper; it reports that the MACHO fraction is most likely between 8% and 50% with a best fit at 20%. More recent (and more sensitive) experiments are published, e.g., http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/astro-ph/0607207v2, showing an upper limit of 8% (for the most-easily-detected masses) and ruling out the "all dark matter is MACHOs" for lumps as small as Mars.

I suspect that MM will ignore this paper just as he ignored it the first time that I cited it.
For MM's information - the abstract of
Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
includes

Results. Using this sample of bright stars, only one candidate event was found, whereas ~39 events would have been expected if the Halo were entirely populated by objects of mass M ~ 0.4M_o. Combined with the results of EROS-1, this implies that the optical depth toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) due to such lenses is < 0.36 × 10⁻⁷ (95%CL), corresponding to a fraction of the halo mass of less than 8%. This optical depth is considerably less than that measured by the MACHO collaboration in the central region of the LMC. More generally, machos in the mass range 0.6 × 10⁻⁷M_o < M < 15M_o are ruled out as the primary occupants of the Milky Way Halo.

The MACHO collaboration are the authors of the paper you cited which was published 7 years before this one.
The mass of Mars is 3.22742996 × 10^-7 solar masses (Google calculator is wonderful!), i.e. well over the lower limit.

 

[DazzaD]

If monoples exist then they will violate the version of Gauss's law ([qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/5/7/6/57619c6a86c79e56ac806faf21502c90.png[/qimg]) that is taught (and in most textbooks). This is derived using the assumption that monoples do not exist. IOW: Gauss's law would be violated because that version of it was derived using an incorrect assumption.

There is a more general definition of Gauss's law that allows for monopoles: [qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/6/2/6/6264bf7ae9c1f31d2b9a93047d8ac2bf.png[/qimg]. That Gauss's law will not be violated.

Ahh.. thank you... beat me to it.

That is why I raised the issue.

The "existence or nonexistence of monopoles" requires Maxwell's equations to be "rewritten" just in the same way that the "existence or nonexistence" of dark matter requires the general relativity solutions to be modified to take that into account (in fact the "rewriting and redoing" for the monopoles is actually a damn sight easier with less things that can affect it, yet MM doesnt seem to be overly worried about that compared with the issue in this thread, and yet it hits at the heart of his preferred explanation).

I thought it prudent to point it out because we are in a dodgy position if we have argued that our "knowledge of x precludes y" if in fact precluding y was a vital step in reaching x in the first place.

That is why scientists are actually being very open minded and sensible about allowing (possibly, until you can convince them otherwise) for the existence of dark energy and dark matter.

They are also concerned on a certain level about the possible existence or nonexistence of magnetic monopoles.

Someone less generous than myself who would want to stir up trouble may suggest that having a limited knowledge of Maxwell's equations and solutions may hold one back in discussing plasma cosmology but I am definitely NOT suggesting that, I just thought it interesting to bring the matter up.

(I apologise if I have side tracked the thread with my comments too...)

 

[Dancing David]

Do you have a reference for that statement?

I have a really hard time believing that a dense plasma of iron ions that has three to four hundred times the number ions of a hydrogen plasma moving the other direction is going to immediately flatten out and that none of the iron ions will "pass through'.

[/lurk]
Hi Michael,
This seems to be a really strange question for someone who understands the hallmark characteristics of plasma, and in your construction of the question you also have a case of special pleading.

Later.
[lurk]

 

[Dancing David]

Well, for one thing your "explanation" gives me some insights into your beliefs (in this case that the majority of the iron atoms are not "neutral").

[/lurk]
Ooooops

You said 'plasma', so there is a problem right there, what 'state of ionization' are you proposing in the two clouds of plasma in your case of special pleading? The level of ionization will determine the EM collision properties of the plasma.
[lurl]

 

[Michael Mozina]

[/lurk]
Ooooops

You said 'plasma', so there is a problem right there,

Most plasmas are in fact "dusty". Even the photosphere includes non ionized particles. I'm frankly stunned that ions and neutral particles are treated exactly the same in these formulas because they will not act the same.

what 'state of ionization' are you proposing in the two clouds of plasma in your case of special pleading?

How can it be "special pleading" when I already asked RC days ago about the level of ionization he *assumed* and I already chastised him for pulling his number out of his back pocket with no references of any sort? I also complained about the fact you weren't treating neutral particles any differently than charged ones. It's hardly special pleading when I've been on your collective case about it the entire time.

The level of ionization will determine the EM collision properties of the plasma.

Of course it will. That is exactly why I've been harping on these specific issues for days. RC's view of plasma is incredibly overly simplistic to the point of absurdity IMO. No wonder you folks expect *everything* to interact. You're treating it as a completely ionized set of clouds that are homogeneously distributed across the region. Plasmas don't behave that way, not on Earth, not inside our solar system, and not in the ICM either. IMO the mainstreams arguments are nothing but a house of cards. If we remove even a single "assumption" from the calculations, the whole concept falls apart instantly.

RC, you simply do not need any "special/exotic" kind of matter to be present in these regions. All you need is ionized and non ionized particles spread out heterogeneously. In no way is Occum going to be kind to your claim of a need for 'special' matter. All we need is 'dusty plasma", "clumpy" non ionized particles and some ordinary rocks distributed in a heterogeneous layout. There is absolutely *NO* need for 'exotic matter' to explain why some material "passes through" and why some matter interacts. The whole mainstream position is based upon the argument of "we can't figure it out, therefore exotic matter did it".

 

[Reality Check]

Michael Mozina rocks = dark matter idea

After about 3 months we have got Michael Mozina's definitive answer to a question about the colliding intracluster medium in colliding galactic clusters: "Lumpy stuff"!

First asked 11 November 2009
Michael Mozina's assertion is that dark matter is "lumpy stuff".

This "lumpy stuff" must provide the excess mass that is seen in the gravitational lensing measurements of the Bullet Cluster, MACS J0025.4-1222 and Abell 520. This is about 40 galaxies for each visible galaxy.

Astromomers have already ruled out MACHOs (one form of "lumpy stuff" according to MM) as a significant part of dark matter. They can be at most 8% of the dark matter in a galaxy.

Intracluster space contains the ICM. It also contains intracluster stars, planetary nebulae and globular clusters that ae likely to have been removed from galaxies by gravitational forces. These visible intracluster objects emit 10-20% of the stellar light. Being charitable this is 20% of the mass of a galaxy.

So far we have "lumpy stuff" giving 0.28 of a galaxy per visible galaxy - ony 39 galaxies to go!

Maybe "lumpy stuff" is dust? But Far-Infrared Emission from Intracluster Dust in Abell Clusters has measured no dust in 5 clusters and a low inferred dust mass in another.

That leaves the other candidates that MM has mentioned for "lumpy stuff": rocks and black holes.



Michael Mozina's assertion leads to the conclusion that the mass in galactic clusters must consist of:

• 2% in galaxies (mostly H & He).
• 14% in the ICM (mostly H & He).
• 84% of "lumpy stuff" which seems to be rocks (mostly C, O and Fe) or black holes in the intracluster space.

Michael Mozina may (or may not) know that C, O and Fe are created in stars by fusion, i.e. H and He are converted to C, O and Fe.
Michael Mozina may (or may not) know that black holes are the remains of stars.

In either case stars are needed to produce his "lumpy stuff".

This means that sometime in the past the number of stars were much more than there were in these galactic clusters. So if astronomers look further away, i.e. further back into time, galaxies will (according to you) become more numerous or bigger to contain the ~40 times increase in the number of stars.

Michael Mozina:
Why do astronomers not see that the number of stars increases manyfold as they look back in time?

And more locally:



If his claim and its concequence are correct then there are about 40 times the mass of the Milky way in "lumpy stuff" between the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies, e.g. the Andromeda Galaxy.

• The "lumpy stuff" is not MACHOs which by definition are in the galatic halo.
• The "lumpy stuff" is not black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs or very faint red dwarfs since these are ruled out by micro-lensing.

That leaves smaller stuff as "lumpy stuff", e.g. unassociated planets, rocks or dust. If there was only a little bit of this stuff then it would not have been detected (yet!). But he is implying that there are essentially 40 Milky Ways of "lumpy stuff" between us and the Andromeda Galaxy.

But the Andromeda Galaxy is well observed.
Michael Mozina:
Why have astronomers not noticed 40 Milky Ways of "lumpy stuff"?