What are boson stars — and what do they have to do with dark matter?

[Admin]

The skies may be full of invisible "boson stars" that could have a connection to dark matter.

What are boson stars — and what do they have to do with dark matter? : Read more

 

[Hildy]

Question - Just as the gravity of a normal star can affect the light from a star it passes in front of, would this also be true of a boson star?

 

[billslugg]

Yes, gravity is a function of mass. All forms of matter and energy possess mass.

 

[Ryan F. Mercer]

Really Paul, again with the dark stars? Why do you want these so badly? Can't I interest you in a teapot?

First of all, axion is about as stupid a name as charm quark. Yes, lets name it after a cleaning agent because it cleans up the problem. Why not name it money? Money cleans up problems too. For those that don't know, the charm quark solved the problem like a charm. Yes, I'm serious. Again, just plain stupid. So why I am going on about axions? Because the idiot that won the argument had a partner, and that partner had a really good idea. They said, "Hey, what if we called it Higglets, because of their relationship to the Higgs Boson", and also... piglets, because who doesn't like piglets? Clever, right? But also a wilting violet, because when said idiot decided their cleaning agent was somehow more clever, guess who won the argument? Now, I can't say I know the gender of those involved, but I have my suspicions.

Secondly, no. Just no. It's a fanciful meandering with no substance behind it. It's like looking for sasquatch. It only shows up in fuzzy imaginations. Stop it. Just stop it.

Third, Higglets!

 

[Ryan F. Mercer]

All forms of matter and energy possess mass.

Photons have no mass.

 

[danR]

Photons have no mass.

If they have no mass, they have no momentum.

 

[billslugg]

Photons have no mass.

Photons have no rest mass, but all photons are moving .
All photons have mass as do all other forms of pure energy.
Matter has mass and energy has mass. Matter and energy can be transformed into each other, but the mass never goes away.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I think the idea of a particle so light is mass that it has huge, macroscopic wave properties is worthy of consideration and exploration.

That said, I think this story slides far down the slippery slope of "click bait' headlines and fanciful extrapolations.

First, why call something that does not emit photons a "star"? Especially if it does not supposedly involve some sort of fusion process? I guess "dark blob" doesn't sell the laundry detergents that sponsor such stories?

Further, why assume that nearly massless particles with huge wavelengths would tend to coalesce with themselves better than with regular matter? Why would they tend to congregate in volumes much much much smaller than their own wavelengths?

Because we are looking for a solution to the apparent existence of gravitational masses that are diffuse around galaxies, there does not seem to be any reason to hypothesize that they form "dark blobs" that are similar to other ideas such as rogue planets and failed stars of regular matter.

And worrying that such a "dark blob" might physically collide with Earth or something else in our solar system seems much less risky than the idea that it could gravitationally disturb Earth's or some other planet's orbit as it passes through the solar system. At least we would expect it to interact by gravitational attraction, even if it could pass through regular matter without any other sort of interaction.

For me, the idea of a sea of nearly massless particles that are bosons at cold temperatures raises the question about whether the galaxies are bathed in a Bose-Einstein condensate with quantum properties that exhibit effects at macroscopic, even interstellar or transgalactic dimensions. I think we would have a very hard time understanding cause/effect relationships for such circumstances, including effects like "negative time". "entanglement", etc.

 

[whoknows]

Photons have no rest mass, but all photons are moving .
All photons have mass as do all other forms of pure energy.
Matter has mass and energy has mass. Matter and energy can be transformed into each other, but the mass never goes away.

With respect can you show where, and how photons, and any other forms of pure energy have mass? Not trying to be picky here, but this fundamentally goes against what I thought I knew - that being, roughly speaking, that mass is a condensation of energy.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Whoknows, try this link: https://profoundphysics.com/if-photons-have-no-mass-how-can-they-have-momentum/

Experimentally, we know that photons hitting the surface of a physical object transfer momentum to that object. From experiments, we know that the effective momentum of a photon is its energy divided by the speed of light.

How we think about that seems to be the real question.

If we assume that momentum is the product of velocity times mass, then we can derive an effective mass of a photon from its momentum, which we can derive from its energy, which we can measure.

But, from there, people go off into various theoretical directions about what mass really is. And that gets us into theories about an Higgs Field and Higgs Bosons creating mass by interactions with other "fields".

So, we seem to be able to show that photons act like they have an effective mass that comes only from their energy, but can then disagree about how that actually works.

 

[billslugg]

...mass is a condensation of energy.

Matter and energy are two different form of mass.
Matter has mass and energy has mass.
Matter and energy are interchangeable forms of mass.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I think the theory goes the other way - the mass of matter is (mainly) due to the energy in the bosons in the nucleus of atoms holding together the quarks that make up protons and neutrons.