Fantastic Four #18 from writer Ryan North and artist Carlos Gomez finds the heroic quartet taking on an asteroid. The family proves a few things as they navigate a series of outlandish and super-powered ways to deflect, redirect, and get assist (and anti-assist) from their son Franklin. do. This is a question that various asteroid mitigation strategists have considered for many years.
For example, creating a force field around an explosion zone and fanning the explosion is probably not a viable technique. Nor can the super-stretchy guy dome himself and bounce asteroids into space (though it’s pretty funny to see Mr. Fantastic turned into Swiss cheese).
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If it can be done, diverting the planet into a different orbit is the best option, and most plans to prevent planetary destruction focus on how to do that. The earlier an asteroid is detected approaching Earth, the less momentum is needed to change its direction, so the first step is to scan the solar system for potentially dangerous objects. It’s about developing tools. If astronomers determine that a rocky body is approaching, there are several ways they could potentially divert it.
Launching a nuclear warhead could nudge it, but it also risks destroying the object. Landing a rocket and pushing it out on a different path could work as well. There’s even a proposal to land a mirror on the side of the asteroid facing the sun and let solar radiation take over. The best approach depends on the time to impact and what type of object is coming towards you.
However, in Fantastic Four #18, the asteroid was somehow invisible, so astronomers had no chance of early detection. They don’t understand why or how it works, and it doesn’t match our understanding of planetary science that heavy, massive bodies in the solar system could be transparent, but it’s amazing. It’s not far off from some of the problems facing astrophysicists. . In other words, dark matter is matter of unknown origin that affects luminescent matter through gravity but leaves no visible trace.
Our best guesses about the nature of dark matter are unified around evidence that it is composed of diffuse, non-interacting giant particles. The fact that it does not emit or reflect light means that it cannot form electromagnetic bonds like the ones that bind “normal” matter. Therefore, we believe that dark matter consists of one or more previously unknown particles, most of which live in the outer halos of galaxies. (This is usually when someone wonders, “Maybe gravity works differently than we thought?” or “What if it’s a black hole?” or any number of other options.) Let me assure you: Whatever idea you have, we’ve already thought of it.
However, this was not always the best guess. After evidence that the material was missing began to mount in the 1970s, astrophysicists proposed a variety of possible explanations, including the idea that the material was hiding as a dark but conventional object. The term MACHO (“MAssive Compact Halo Objects”) was coined to describe dense objects (such as planets, black holes, and dim red/brown dwarfs) that float through space outside planetary systems.
Fortunately, there are ways to measure the occurrence of these types of events, even though they are “invisible.” To make up for the lack of matter in the galaxy, from our point of view, we would need enough machos to occasionally pass in front of the stars. Therefore, if you select some stars and constantly monitor their brightness, you should notice that the brightness changes from time to time when Macho passes in front of it.
These objects do not block the background starlight. In fact, it acts like a gravitational magnifier, temporarily increasing background starlight. This is known as a “microlensing,” and multiple studies have been conducted to estimate the number of possible MACHOS by monitoring the sudden increase in brightness of a series of stars. What did they find? Nothing.
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Well, not that there’s anyone. There is some, but not enough to explain the missing dark matter. There are some faint objects in the galaxy, probably very faint dwarfs or stellar remnants, but it takes several times more to account for the gravitational effects of dark matter that we otherwise observe. must exist.
The invisible asteroids in Fantastic Four would be too small to cause observable microlensing. The rock that turned Mr. Fantastic into Swiss cheese could have been our lost dark matter if there was enough of it, but there would have to be a lot of it. And they need to be very invisible. And there won’t be any Marvel characters foreseeing the future to let us know they’re coming.
AIPT Science is co-hosted by AIPT and New York City Skeptics.
