P4: The Greater Averaged Universe (GAU):
How the Solar System cannibalizes the Oort Cloud

[The Four Pillars of GAU, Part 4]


David Noel
<davidn@aoi.com.au>
Ben Franklin Centre for Theoretical Research
PO Box 27, Subiaco, WA 6008, Australia.



The Greater Averaged Universe (GAU)
It can be helpful, when considering a particular component or event within the larger Universe, to think of it as in two parts. First, the Greater Averaged Universe or GAU (the wider background), and second, the specific Local Entity which is being looked at.

The GAU is assumed to be fairly uniform at very large scales, while the Local Entity is set against it or operates within it. The GAU is like one of the great oceans of the Earth, while the Local Entity is like a jellyfish or submarine moving through it, or maybe an ocean current within it.

When it comes to the Universe, the smallest Local Entity would be a solar system (a star with its accompanying planets), while bigger entities could be galaxies or clusters of galaxies.

Our Solar System -- the Heliosphere
We can look at our particular Local Entity, the Solar System, to illustrate the concept. The familiar picture is of the glowing Sun in the centre, with the eight planets orbiting in a plane around it, each with their own moons. This is common knowledge.



Figure GAUF1. The Heliosphere, containing the Sun and our planetary system. From [1].


There are various other components of the Solar System. Between Mars and Jupiter lies a ring of smaller solid bodies, the Asteroid Belt. There are many thousands of these, orbiting the Sun like the planets. There are also asteroids outside this ring, some with unusual orbits.

Beyond the furthermost planet, Neptune, is an area where bodies exist in more irregular situations. Neptune is about 30 AU from the Sun, where 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) is the distance from the Sun to the Earth.

Beyond Neptune, bodies are increasingly less confined to the equatorial plane in which the planets orbit (they have "inclined" orbits), and they usually have orbits shaped like long ellipses, rather than circular. Firstly beyond Neptune is the Kuiper Belt, at 30-50 AU, and then the Scattered Disc, from 50 to about 100 AU. At the outer edge of the Scattered Disc is the Heliosphere, the true boundary of our Solar System. Beyond that is the Oort Cloud.

There are also many comets, tiny bodies which sweep into our planetary space, usually from a long way out. The well-known Halley's Comet has an orbit quite close in; it gets as close to the Sun as 0.6 AU, between the orbits of Venus and Mercury, while its far-point is about 35 AU out, beyond Neptune.

Some comets have the outer points of their orbits in the Kuiper Belt or the Scattered Disc, and so are true members of the Solar System. But the big majority come from the Oort Cloud, and are only temporary visitors; their very elliptical orbits can be calculated, but if these take them outside the Heliosphere, they will leave the Solar System, probably never to return.

There is more detail on this in P3: Living In The Universe [3].

The Solar Wind
As well as the solid bodies, there are magnetic and particle fields and streams which are part of the system. A major force is the Solar Wind. Here is some of what Wikipedia says about it [7].

"The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. This plasma consists of mostly electrons, protons and alpha particles with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV; embedded in the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy, from the high temperature of the corona and magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic phenomena in it.

The solar wind flows outward supersonically at a speed of about one million miles per hour to great distances, filling a region known as the heliosphere, an enormous bubble-like volume surrounded by the interstellar medium. Other related phenomena include the aurora (northern and southern lights), the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the Sun, and geomagnetic storms that can change the direction of magnetic field lines and create strong currents in power grids on Earth".


The Solar Wind streams out very energetically from the Sun in three dimensions until it reaches a boundary called the Termination Shock. At this boundary, it slows down quite sharply, and continues slowly out to the edge of the Heliosphere. You can see a two-dimensional analogue of this in a stream of water flowing from a tap onto the bottom of a kitchen sink.



Figure GAUF2. Termination shock analogue in kitchen sink. From [8].


Inside and Outside the Heliosphere
An important point is that conditions inside and outside the Heliosphere may be quite different. The Heliosphere is the farthest point from the Sun at which the Sun remains the gravitational master. Beyond the Heliosphere, bodies are no longer necessarily in orbit about the Sun, because the gravitation from Oort Cloud bodies takes over.

So we have a "tiny" spherical Local Entity, the Solar System, within the surrounding GAU, which for our case is called the Oort Cloud. This extends out to at least 100,000 AU, a thousand times the radius of the Heliosphere, equal to almost half-way to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri). In these articles, the material it contains is called the "Oort Soup" (this applies to the general GAU, not just our local area).



Figure GAUF3. Representation of the Oort Soup surrounding our Solar System. From [4].


We want to try and work out the history of how our Heliosphere evolved and developed from the original GAU, and look at the distribution and density of bodies inside and outside the Heliosphere. Conditions inside and outside the Heliosphere boundary are very different (though there may be a relatively small transition zone).

In doing this, it's vital to recognize that our Local Entity is moving quite rapidly within the GAU, it is not standing still relative to its surroundings. This fact will be used to make an important deduction about our Solar System's history.

It also seems that the "Heliosphere" may be shaped more like a rugby ball than a perfect sphere [11], perhaps distorted by its push through the GAU. Beyond its forward edge, it was once thought that it created a "Bow Shock" in the GAU ahead of it, perhaps at around 200 AU. However, 2012 results from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, at around 122 AU out, do not support this theory [11].

Gravity, Gravity Wells, and Gravity Vortexes
We have seen how gravity is one of the major forces determining the structure of the Heliosphere and the GAU beyond it. There are some "models" or analogies which help to visualize these effects.

In one of these, gravity is represented by a stretched horizontal rubber sheet, and astronomical bodies as solid balls, lying on the sheet.



Figure GAUF5. Gravity as a rubber sheet. From [9].


In the figure, the Sun is a very heavy ball which drags the sheet down. Planets such as Earth or Mars are lighter balls which are orbiting around the Sun, pressing more lightly into the rubber sheet. They do not fall into the Sun because centrifugal forces keep them up on the wall of the vortex, like a "wall-of-death" motorcyclist.

The situation can also be represented graphically by a Gravity Well, as in Figure GAUF6. Here the energy needed to send a body beyond reach of the Earth's gravity is plotted against distance from the Earth. The figure shows that not so much energy is needed to lift a near-Earth satellite (for example, a microwave telecommunications relay) into orbit, compared to that for a geosynchronous TV broadcasting satellite (these are about 36,000 km above the surface).

Similar Gravity Wells can be drawn for the Sun and the Solar System. In these, The Sun lies at the bottom of a deep well, and each planet lies in a much smaller well in the side.



Figure GAUF6. Earth's gravity well. From [10].


The dotted line at the top of the figure represents the "escape velocity", the amount of energy needed to escape the well. For the Solar System, the escape velocity coincides with the gravitational boundary of the Heliosphere.

For bodies in the Solar System, the situation is like being in a vortex. They are spinning around their gravitational centre, and they have to keep up their orbital speed to avoid falling down to the bottom.



Figure GAUF7. A whirlpool in the Ocean. From [13].


This Gravity Vortex is similar to a whirlpool on the surface of the ocean. Caught in the swirling edge, an object spins round rapidly until friction robs it of energy, and it is pulled down. In a gravitational vortex, if a body loses energy, the only way is down. Hardly anything ever escapes from a gravitational well.

Voyager 1 -- Venturing beyond the Heliosphere
The only man-made object known to have escaped the Sun's gravity, to have broken through the boundary of the Heliosphere, is the space probe Voyager 1. For years this has been slowly edging its way up the side of the Sun's gravitational well, and is now over the rim. In future years, it will be followed by its travelling companion Voyager 2, as of 2015 still not over the rim.



Figure GAUF8. Artist's image of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. From [1].


Here is some of what Wikipedia says [14] about Voyager 1.

"Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Having operated for 38 years and 2 months, the spacecraft still communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of 133 AU as of autumn 2015, it is the farthest spacecraft from Earth and the only one in interstellar space.

After completing its primary mission with the flyby of Saturn on November 20, 1980, Voyager 1 began an extended mission to explore the regions and boundaries of the outer heliosphere. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause to become the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space and study the interstellar medium. Voyager 1's extended mission is expected to continue until around 2025, when its radioisotope thermoelectric generators will no longer supply enough electric power to operate any of its scientific instruments.

The radio communication system of Voyager 1 was designed to be used up to and beyond the limits of the Solar System. The communication system includes a 3.7-meter diameter parabolic dish high-gain antenna to send and receive radio waves via the three Deep Space Network stations on the Earth. As of October 2014, signals from Voyager 1 take over 18 hours to reach Earth."


Inside and Outside the Heliosphere
Data received from Voyager 1 has shown that conditions do change considerably on going through the Heliosphere boundary. One of the things Voyager has been measuring is the direction of the local magnetic field.



Figure GAUF9. Spacecraft Voyager 1 breaches the heliosphere, encounters changed magnetic field. From [2].


In [2] it says "Upon exiting the heliopause, the local measurements of the magnetic field by Voyager 1, shown here as a compass needle, differed by 40 degrees from the 'true magnetic north' estimated to be the direction of the magnetic field in the pristine interstellar medium. As the spacecraft pushed into interstellar space, the compass needle moved ever closer to true magnetic north."

Another important observation from Voyager was that the particle density observed increased greatly on moving through the boundary. According to [6], "Voyager 1's crossing into interstellar space meant it had left the heliosphere -- the bubble of solar wind surrounding our sun and the planets. Observations from Voyager's instruments found that the particle density was 40 times greater outside this boundary than inside, confirming that it had indeed left the heliosphere."

This brings us on to the vital topic of the form and amount of matter outside solar systems.

Density of the GAU or Oort Cloud
The amount and mass of material in the volumes beyond the limits of the Solar System is one of the fundamental issues of modern cosmology. At the same time, it is an area where comparatively little real data is available, and past assertions have been little more than speculation.

Something of the relatively unknown nature of the topic is shown in a good 2015 article on the Oort Cloud by Mark Williams [18], in which he notes that its very existence remains unproven.

Most of the theory which has been built up on the Oort Cloud has been based on observations of the relatively infrequent long-period comets, which are assumed to have originated from this Oort Cloud. Comets have little mass, and extrapolating from this, with the assumption that the Oort Cloud is mostly populated by comets, has given some extraordinarily low ideas of the mass of the Cloud. Mark Williams says "Its total mass is not known, but – assuming that Halley’s Comet is a typical representation of outer Oort Cloud objects – it has the combined mass of roughly 3 × 1025 kilograms, or five Earths."

This is in total contrast to the picture built up in P1, The Cosmic Smog model for solar system formation, and the nature of 'Dark Matter' [21]. In "Cosmic Smog", the Solar System was considered as developing from a spherical volume of typical interstellar material, "Oort Soup", by aggregation of planetesimals pre-existing within the volume.

The Cosmic Smog Model provided solutions to some puzzling features of modern cosmology. First among these was Dark Matter, which P1 showed was simply the Oort Soup planetesimals, which had lain undetected because they were too cold to emit visible light and too distant to observe by reflected light.

In P2, The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation [22], these same bodies were shown as the origin of CMBR, microwave radiation which floods the Universe. But a consequence of the P1 model was that the Oort Cloud contained far, far more mass than suggested by earlier ideas.

It was a matter of logic that, if a 100 AU radius sphere of Oort Soup material could aggregate to form our Solar System, and the original Oort Soup was of roughly uniform composition, then the whole Oort Cloud could contain many times the mass of the Solar System.

In P1 it was pointed out that if our Solar System aggregated from a certain volume of the Oort Soup, and the Oort Soup was roughly uniform at that time, then in theory the Oort Cloud could contain up to a million times the mass of the Solar System.

In practice, this is not the case, and we can see two reasons why not. Implicit in the P1 deduction were the assumptions that aggregation occurred only from the original volume, and that this volume was contained within a relatively fixed and stable Oort Soup distribution. Both these assumptions appear false.

But first, what does the general nature of the Universe suggest about the mass it contains outside stars and their ilk (such as black holes)? We can learn something of this from the Dark Matter affair.

In 1929, the brilliant Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky coined the term "Dark Matter". He was examining the movement of clusters of galaxies, and found that they appeared to contain insufficient mass for their movement to comply with gravitational laws. Here is an extract from [19].

"Zwicky also did pioneering work on gravitational lensing, and on the relationship between masses and rotation speeds of galaxies, which threw up a big disagreement with classical mechanics. Investigating the Coma cluster, a vast complex of over a thousand galaxies, he found that in order for the cluster to be stable, there must be ten times more mass present than could be directly observed.

This "missing" mass was crucial for keeping the cluster together. If it were not there in some form, the member galaxies would not be bound to one another and would go flying off into space. So in order for the cluster to exist at all, there must be much more mass within the cluster and the individual galaxies than we can directly detect in the form of stars, gas and dust.

When faced with this apparent contradiction, Zwicky shrugged and concluded that the missing mass must just be some cold, dark stuff that doesn't give off much light, so we can't see it directly. He called this non-luminous stuff Dark Matter. He began to investigate other clusters, and found similar results for each of them."


So, from Zwicky's work, which has been amply confirmed since by many others, we can set up a ballpark figure: the Oort Soup, the mass-containing component of the GAU, has 10 times the mass of the "visible" Universe (the part we know about from light and other electromagnetic radiation).

90% of the Universe's Mass is "Dark"
This figure of 90% is only an estimate, searching the literature will give a range of figures. The topic is made more confusing by references to Dark Energy. Dark Energy has nothing whatsoever to do with Dark Matter, instead it is (in my view) purely an artifact of the erroneous theory that the Universe is expanding.

In these articles, it is concluded that Dark Matter is merely normal Oort-Soup planetesimals, and that CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, is just normal thermal (black-body) radiation which is expected from bodies at the low temperatures of the Oort Soup. For more detail on this, see P2 - The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation [21].

There is some support for the 90% estimate above, from the relative amounts of radiation of different wavelengths seen in the Universe. Looking out at the stars, we see a flood of visible light, but in fact over 90% of the photons permeating the Universe are CMBR photons, invisible to our eyes -- and to most telescopes in use.

However, there is no direct correlation between the masses of bodies (such as stars or planets or planetesimals), and the number of photons they give out. This number is governed by the surface areas of the emitting bodies [23].

The Oort Soup is in turmoil
There is no reason to assume that Oort Cloud bodies, remote from the gravitational influence of the Sun, are necessarily settled in their positions. Instead, they are likely to be in continuous relative motion, like the Brownian Motion observed in particles suspended in a liquid [15].



Figure GAUF10. Brownian Motion. From [15].


In the Oort Soup, the distribution of solid bodies will obviously much more sparse than in the illustration, but the sense is the same. The circle in the figure can be thought of as a solar system, subjected to a certain amount of impact from the Oort Soup bodies moving all around.

Harking back then to the concept of the Solar System as a gravity well or vortex (Figures GAUF5-7), it can be seen that buffeting of the Heliosphere by Oort Soup bodies in this way must inevitably lead to some being captured. Some bodies from outside the gravity well will fall in, and most will be captured, adding to the mass of the Solar System.

This is what we see in the standard picture of a comet from the Oort Cloud, entering the Solar System from any direction. In effect, the Heliosphere has a gravity vortex at every point of its surface.

As well as tiny bodies like comets, larger ones, maybe up to planet-size, may occasionally be captured. It will be harder to capture more massive intruders, as the relative gravitational influence of existing planets will be less, and some will have enough momentum to escape out of the opposite side of the gravity well.

The Heliosphere is in motion through the GAU
Another surprising fact which has been discovered from analysis of CMBR is that the Heliosphere is in rapid movement through the GAU. The CMBR has a "dipole" character due to movement of the Earth and Sun through the surrounding GAU from where the CMBR is generated.



Figure GAUF11. The CMBR Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe. From [20].


In the figure, the oval shows the wavelengths of CMBR photons coming in to the Earth from all directions of the sky -- there is more explanation of the nature of these ovals in [23].

The term "dipole" is short for saying that if you look forward towards a certain point in the sky (towards the constellation Crater), the CMBR signal has a small decrease in wavelength (a blue shift), while if you look backwards (in the opposite direction to Crater), the CMBR signal has an exactly equivalent wavelength increase (red shift).

These wavelength shifts are caused by the well-known Doppler Effect, and from their size, the rate of motion of the Solar System through the GAU can be calculated quite accurately.

Here is some of what [16] says about the interpretation of the CMBR dipole.

"Explanation: Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.

But these speeds are less than the speed that all of these objects together move relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). In the above all-sky map from the COBE satellite, radiation in the Earth's direction of motion appears blueshifted and hence hotter, while radiation on the opposite side of the sky is redshifted and colder.

The map indicates that the Local Group moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to this primordial radiation. This high speed was initially unexpected and its magnitude is still unexplained. Why are we moving so fast? What is out there?"


So here is another puzzle which is explicable here. Our Heliosphere is travelling quite rapidly through the GAU, at 600 km/sec, towards the constellation Crater. This motion is not the result of orbits of the Earth, Sun, Galaxy or Local Group, but is an individual movement of our Heliosphere.

If all the Sun, Galaxy, and Local Group movements are added together, they would amount to about 370 km/sec, much less than [16]'s 600 km/sec. It's far simpler to assume that our Solar System, our Heliosphere, has its own movement vector through the GAU, it is moving independently of the Oort Cloud. Like the jellyfish moving through the ocean, the two things are independent. And if the movement takes place within a greater ocean current, why not?

There is a fine detail which may be mentioned. If our Heliosphere is the Local Entity under consideration, then the movement of the Earth round the Sun takes place within it. As the Earth's orbit is approximately in the same plane as the Heliosphere's movement towards Crater, then the CMBR dipole should show a small six-monthly variation (of about 30 km/sec) in the Doppler Shift, as the Earth viewer is moving towards Crater or away from it on the opposite sides of its orbit.

In fact, just such a six-monthly variation is observed. In [17] it says "The COBE DMR observations clearly show the change in velocity at 30 kilometers per second due to the motion of the Earth around the Sun. One can see a clear sinusoidal pattern in the amplitude and direction of the dipole with a one year period in the four years of COBE DMR data. Differencing maps taken six months apart produces the familiar dipole pattern with the amplitude and direction of the Earth's motion."

There is an even finer detail which could be investigated. The latest CMBR instrument, the Planck Observatory, does not orbit the Earth, but instead orbits the Sun at the L2 Lagrange Point, about 1.5 million km out from Earth (see Figure LIUF19, in P3). This is only about 1% further out than Earth, but its slighter higher orbital speed might still influence 6-monthly CMBR data.

Where the CMBR we see comes from
The simplest interpretation of the situation is that the CMBR which we record on Earth comes mostly from the local Oort Cloud, the part of the GAU closest to us. We may still get some CMBR from farther away, but it will be diluted by distance, just like starlight.

There is a natural assumption that the CMBR patterns we see will be more or less the same anywhere in the Universe, but this is not necessarily so. Our bit of the GAU will be quite like that at 10 or 20 light years, or 2 or 3 galaxies away, but need not be exactly the same. Their CMBR peaks or total energies received may differ from ours.

The Heliosphere scavenger
Just as the jellyfish moving through the ocean will be continually picking up food as it pumps water through its body, or snares material with its tentacles, so too our Heliosphere will be picking up particles of Oort Soup as it speeds through the Brownian-motion GAU.

Here then is a mechanism by which our Solar System will have a much greater total mass than that contained within an equivalent volume of the GAU. Our Heliosphere will have been picking up mass for billions of years, cannibalizing the GAU. And the more it picks up, the greater its gravitational attraction, and the greater its efficiency at harvesting mass.

It is the natural route for mass under gravitational forces to compact together, to aggregate, whether it is the parts of a galaxy or a pile of rubble (the exceptions are what are called AGNs). Look again at Figure GAUF10, it is easy to think of the blue circle as a heliosphere, gathering mass as it moves through the GAU.

We usually think of our Solar System as being of fixed mass. But, delving far back into its early history, it is quite possible that the early Solar System had much less mass than now, and has been slowly incrementing itself over a few billion years.

The Four Pillars Of GAU
This article, P4, is the last of a quartet on the web about the Solar System and the wider Universe. The other three are listed here, and later in this article, after References and Links, the Stablemate Articles include clickable links to them.

P1: The Cosmic Smog model for solar system formation, and the nature of 'Dark Matter'.

P2: The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

P3: Living In The Universe: (What CMBR tells us about Dark Matter, and much more).



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References and Links

[1] Paul Glister. Heliospheric Crossings (and the Consequences). http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=9654 .
[2] Study solves mysteries of Voyager 1's journey into interstellar space. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029102401.htm .
[3] Living In The Universe: (What CMBR tells us about Dark Matter, and much more) http://www.aoi.com.au/Living/index.htm .
[4] Comets. http://astro.hopkinsschools.org/course_documents/solar_system/icyworlds/comets/comets.htm .
[5] The Solar System. http://www.practicalspace.com/solar-system.php .
[6] Voyager 1 Helps Solve Interstellar Medium Mystery. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4756 .
[7] Solar Wind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind .
[8] Termination shock in kitchen sink. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Termination_shock_in_sink.jpg .
[9] The stationary wobbling sun. http://sunorbit.net/sun.htm .
[10] Earth's Gravity Well. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/10/gravityWell.png .
[11] Heliosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere .
[12] Backdrops Fantastic. http://www.backdropsfantastic.com/backdrop_themes/backdrops/Backdrop_SS005.htm .
[13] Dark Whirlpool. http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Whirlpool .
[14] Voyager 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1 .
[15] Unit 1-1.d Brownian Motion. http://www.itlrc.com/science/scie4001/Unit%201-1%20Brownian_Motion.html .
[16] CMB Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140615.html .
[17] Earth's translation speed. http://https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/earths-translation-speed.537653/ .
[18] Matt Williams. What is the Oort Cloud? http://http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud/ .
[19] David Noel. Refining the Zwicky Constant - A new more soundly-based constant for inter-galactic distances, replacing the Hubble Constant. http://www.aoi.com.au/Zwicky/index.htm .
[20] Cosmic Background Radiation. http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec27.html .
[21] David Noel. P1: The Cosmic Smog model for solar system formation, and the nature of 'Dark Matter'. http://www.aoi.com.au/Cosmic/index.htm .
[22] David Noel. P2: The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. http://www.aoi.com.au/OortSoup/index.htm .
[23] David Noel. P3: Living In The Universe: (What CMBR tells us about Dark Matter, and much more). http://www.aoi.com.au/Living/index.htm .





Stablemate articles:

P0: -- The Overview article for the four COSMOLOGY PLUS articles: P0: The Four Pillars of GAU: The Solar System and the Greater Averaged Universe.

P1 -- About the nature of matter between the stars: The Cosmic Smog model for solar system formation, and the nature of 'Dark Matter'.

P2 -- About the origin of CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation: The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation .

P3 -- How the microwave radiation from the Oort Soup opens up a new branch of Mid-IR astronomy: Living In The Universe: (What CMBR tells us about Dark Matter, and much more).

P4: -- More about the Oort Soup, and how the Solar System fed from this in its billion-year history: The Greater Averaged Universe (GAU) -- How the Solar System cannibalizes the Oort Cloud.

Fritz Zwicky, galactic Red Shifts, and Dark Matter: Refining the Zwicky Constant - A new more soundly-based constant for inter-galactic distances, replacing the Hubble Constant.





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Draft Version 1.0, 2015 Nov 4-19
First version 1.1 on Web, 2015 Nov 20. V. 1.2 Minor revision 2016 Feb 3.
V. 2.0 for COSMOLOGY PLUS part 4, 2016 Feb 24. -nn.