CfA OIR Division Lunch Talks

October 28, 1999 Pratt Conference Room, Perkin G-04, 12:30 pm

Optical and Infrared Astronomy Division Talk


Turbulence, viscosity, diffusion and gravity in the formation of cosmological structure: the fluid mechanics of dark matter

Prof. Carl Gibson, U. California San Diego

Turbulence was inhibited by photon viscosity and buoyancy forces of the first structures as the primordial plasma fragmented into proto-supercluster to proto-galaxy objects starting 30,000 years after the Big Bang. After photon decoupling at 300,000 years, the neutral primordial gas fragmented into proto-globular-cluster mass clumps of small planetary mass objects that persist as the galactic dark matter according to a new gravitational condensation theory of Gibson 1996, supporting the Schild 1996 suggestion from measured twinkling frequencies of lensed quasar images that the mass of the lens galaxy is dominated by "rogue planets ... likely to be the missing mass".

See http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~ir118 for pictures and preprints.