Questions tagged [machos]

Massive Compact Halo Objects

MACHOs is a generic term for macroscopic bodies that are difficult to directly detect at astronomical distances, and hence might solve the dark matter problem. Potential MACHOs are brown dwarfs, cold neutron stars, cold white dwarfs and bodies less massive than stars. Some consider black holes as potential MACHOs.

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Does the term "dark matter" apply to nonluminescent bodies which still interact electromagnetically?

On the new Astronomy.SE site, I was having a short discussion on one of my answers. The basic discrepancy was; can MACHOs like black holes/brown dwarfs/neutron stars be termed "dark matter"? My reasoning is that these objects do not radiate EM…
Manishearth
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Likelihood of MACHOs being the best candidate for dark matter

Massive compact halo objects ("MACHOs") include a wide variety of hardly detectable bodies such as brown / white / black dwarfs and black holes, to name a few. If we take into account the inevitable end of all stars into either a white dwarf, a…
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What can we infer about heavy dark matter?

Until recently, most of the ideas regarding the nature of dark matter revolved around WIMPs. Now that the LHC has not turned up any evidence of SUSY, people are starting to earnestly look towards other options, especially the axion and other light…
Yly
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Gravitational lensing increase brightness

In Barbara Ryden's Intro to Cosmology, she states that a method used by teams to detect lensing by Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOS) is to monitor millions of stars and watch for flux changes. Why does Gravitational lensing change flux of light…