Are Planets Ensnared in Dark Matter Strands?

DENSE DARK MATTER HAIRS SPREADING OUT FROM EARTH, JUPITER, AND OTHER COMPACT BODIES

Author:

Prézeau

Abstract:

It is shown that compact bodies project out strands of concentrated dark matter filaments, henceforth simply called hairs. These hairs are a consequence of the fine-grained stream structure of dark matter halos, and as such constitute a new physical prediction of ΛCDM. Using both an analytical model of planetary density and numerical simulations utilizing the Fast Accurate Integrand Renormalization algorithm (a fast geodesics calculator described below) with realistic planetary density inputs, dark matter streams moving through a compact body are shown to produce hugely magnified dark matter densities along the stream velocity axis passing through the center of the body. Typical hair density enhancements are 10⁷ for Earth and 10⁸ for Jupiter. The largest enhancements occur for particles streaming through the core of the body that are mostly focused at a single point called the root of the hair. For the Earth, the root is located at about 10⁶ km from the planetary center with a density enhancement of around 10⁹ while for a gas giant like Jupiter, the root is located at around 10⁵ km with an enhancement of around 10¹¹. Beyond the root, the hair density precisely reflects the density layers of the body, providing a direct probe of planetary interiors.

Coldest Brown Dwarfs Hint at Continuum from Planet to Star, not Separate Formation Types

Astronomers are constantly on the hunt for ever-colder star-like bodies, and two years ago a new class of such objects was discovered by researchers using NASA's WISE space telescope. However, until now no one has known exactly how cool their surfaces really are - some evidence suggested they could be room temperature.

A new study shows that while these brown dwarfs, sometimes called failed stars, are indeed the coldest known free-floating celestial bodies, they are warmer than previously thought with temperatures about 250-350 degrees Fahrenheit.

To reach such low surface temperatures after cooling for billions of years means that these objects can only have about 5 to 20 times the mass of Jupiter. Unlike the Sun, these objects' only source of energy is from their gravitational contraction, which depends directly on their mass.

"If one of these objects was found orbiting a star, there is a good chance that it would be called a planet," says Trent Dupuy, a Hubble Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But because they probably formed on their own and not in a proto-planetary disk, astronomers still call these objects brown dwarfs even if they are "planetary mass."

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Uranus' Weather Revealed

In 1986, when Voyager swept past Uranus, the probe's portraits of the planet were "notoriously bland," disappointing scientists, yielding few new details of the planet and its atmosphere, and giving it a reputation as a bore of the solar system.

Now, however, thanks to a new technique applied at the Keck Observatory, Uranus is coming into sharp focus through high-resolution infrared images, revealing in incredible detail the bizarre weather of the seventh planet from the sun.

The images were released in Reno, Nev. today (Oct. 17, 2012) at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences and provide the best look to date of Uranus's complex and enigmatic weather.

The planet's deep blue-green atmosphere is thick with hydrogen, helium and methane, Uranus's primary condensable gas. Winds blow mainly east to west at speeds up to 560 miles per hour, in spite of the small amounts of energy available to drive them. Its atmosphere is almost equal to Neptune's as the coldest in our solar system with cloud-top temperatures in the minus 360-degree Fahrenheit range, cold enough to freeze methane.

Large weather systems, which are probably much less violent than the storms we know on Earth, behave in bizarre ways on Uranus, explains Larry Sromovsky, a University of Wisconsin-Madison planetary scientist who led the new study using the Keck II telescope.

"Some of these weather systems," Sromovsky notes, "stay at fixed latitudes and undergo large variations in activity. Others are seen to drift toward the planet's equator while undergoing great changes in size and shape. Better measures of the wind fields that surround these massive weather systems are the key to unraveling their mysteries."

To get a better picture of atmospheric flow on Uranus, Sromovsky and colleagues Pat Fry, also of UW-Madison, Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), and Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkeley, used new infrared techniques to detect smaller, more widely distributed weather features whose movements can help scientists trace the planet's pattern of blustery winds.

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The complexity of Uranus's weather is puzzling, Sromovsky explains. The primary driving mechanism must be solar energy because there is no detectable internal energy source. "But the sun is 900 times weaker there than on Earth because it is 30 times further from the sun, so you don't have the same intensity of solar energy driving the system," explains Sromovsky. "Thus the atmosphere of Uranus must operate as a very efficient machine with very little dissipation. Yet the weather variations we see seem to defy that requirement."

The new Keck II pictures of the planet, according to Sromovsky, are the "most richly detailed views of Uranus yet obtained by any instrument on any observatory. No other telescope could come close to producing this result.