From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon Oct 04 1999 - 03:12:06 MDT
Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu) Fri, 01 Oct 1999 13:24:17 writes:
>This should warm Robert Bradbury's heart. Here is otherwise puzzling
>evidence that seems consistent with galactic aliens. Comments Amara?
>http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/9_18_99/fob1.htm
>"Have Milky Way MACHOs Been Found?" By R. Cowen
One of the things I've missed since I've moved to Germany are timely
deliveries of my Science News....
(I hadn't seen that article yet.)
Well, one could have lots of candidates for MACHOs, if the
object is dim enough. Such as white dwarfs, brown dwarfs,
interstellar meteorites :-)
When I asked the galaxy experts (my field of expertise is more in
our immediate neighborhood) up the hill at Max-Planck-Institut fuer
Astronomie about white dwarfs as candidates for MACHOs, they said that
in principle it could work, but the key problem is how would one get
_that many_ white dwarfs that are that old. They also said that it's
more typical to associate brown dwarfs with MACHOS, than white dwarfs.
And I note that, with all of the extrasolar planet discoveries,
there's now a blurry distinction between stars and planets, and
so brown dwarfs are sometime classified as a huge Jupiter-like planet
and vice versa.
Amara
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Amara Graps | Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik
Interplanetary Dust Group | Saupfercheckweg 1
+49-6221-516-543 | 69117 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de * http://galileo.mpi-hd.mpg.de/~graps
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"Never fight an inanimate object." - P. J. O'Rourke
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