4 ms·
That does not matter because you aren't looking to find every specific black hole, the amount of black holes required for MACHOs to be the answer to dark matter
by throwaway2048 6y ago
That does not matter because you aren't looking to find every specific black hole, the amount of black holes required for MACHOs to be the answer to dark matter would have orders of magnitude more micro-lensing than we see, pretty much no matter what, there is only so much space inside a galaxy.
- Retric 6y agoMore transient events are also orders of magnitude more common. If a black hole’s geometry from you lenses’s light from a volume of space that could contain a star for X time. Them it would lens an equivalent volume of space 10x as far from it for 1/10th as long, and but that volume of space is 10^3 times as large. (Ignoring the edge of the Milky Way etc.) If you consider just how exact the alignments need to be for hour+ events the difference becomes even more pronounced.
- Retric 6y agoPS: To be clear 2048’s point is still correct, black holes are a small fraction of the Milky Way’s total mass and a long way from filling the dark mater gap. It’s the actual experiment which is generally misinterpreted.