Missing Galactic C,N,O - Aliens?

Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Fri, 01 Oct 1999 13:24:17 -0400

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

... To explain why the rapidly rotating stars and gas at the edge of the galaxy don’t simply fly away, scientists have been forced to assume that a vast halo of dark matter, extending thousands of light-years beyond the Milky Way’s visible outline, envelops the galaxy. The identity of this unseen material has remained under wraps.

Now, two teams of astronomers report that they may have glimpsed some of the veiled stuff, and it might be nothing more than elderly white dwarfs—the dim, compact remains of ordinary stars like the sun. ...

Halo populations of white dwarfs pose serious problems, Richer notes. Formation of such objects would have thrown into interstellar space far more carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen than observations show. In addition, the appearance of galaxies today does not indicate that they once had enough sun-like stars to form a large population of halo white dwarfs.

Theorist Bohdan Paczynski of Princeton University says the findings are intriguing, but he notes that by invoking the white dwarfs, the researchers
"are trading one set of difficulties for another that is equally as difficult."

Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323