Re: Missing Galactic C,N,O - Aliens?

Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Mon, 4 Oct 1999 10:12:06 +0100

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


Amara Graps                 | Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik
Interplanetary Dust Group   | Saupfercheckweg 1
+49-6221-516-543            | 69117 Heidelberg, GERMANY
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