Wednesday, March 14, 2018

TGD based model explains why the rotation periods of galaxies are same

I learned in FB about very interesting finding about the angular rotation velocities of stars near the edges of the galactic disks (see this). The rotation period is about one giga-year. The discovery was made by a team led by professor Gerhardt Meurer from the UWA node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). Also a population of older stars was found at the edges besides young stars and interstellar gas. The expectation was that older stars would not be present.

The rotation periods are claimed to in a reasonable accuracy same for all spiral galaxies irrespective of the size. The constant velocity spectrum for distant stars implies ω ∝ 1/r for r>R. It is important do identify the value of the radius R of the edge of the visible part of galaxy precisely. I understood that outside the edge stars are not formed. According to Wikipedia, the size R of Milky Way is in the range (1-1.8)× 105 ly and the velocity of distant stars is v=240 km/s. This gives T∼ R/v∼ .23 Gy, which is by a factor 1/4 smaller than the proposed universal period of T=1 Gy at the edge. It is clear that the value of T is sensitive to the identification of the edge and that one can challenge the identification Redge=4× R.

In the following I will consider two TGD inspired arguments. The first argument is classical and developed by studying the velocity spectrum of stars for Milky Way, and leads to a rough view about the dynamics of dark matter. Second argument is quantal and introduces the notion of gravitational Planck constant hbargr and quantization of angular momentum as multiples of hbargr. It allows to predict the value of T and deduce a relationship between the rotation period T and the average surface gravity of the galactic disk.


In the attempts understand how T could be universal in TGD framework, it is best to look at the velocity spectrum of Milky Way depicted in a Wikipedia article about Milky Way (see this).

  1. The illustration shows that the v(ρ) has maximum at around r=1 kpc. The maximum corresponds in reasonable approximation to vmax= 250 km/s, which is only 4 per cent above the asymptotic velocity vrot=240 km/s for distant stars as deduced from the figure.

    Can this be an accident? This would suggest that the stars move under the gravitational force of galactic string alone apart from a small contribution from self-gravitation! The dominating force could be due to the straight portions of galactic string determining also the velocity vrot of distant stars.

    It is known that there is also a rigid body part of dark matter having radius r∼ 1 kpc (3.3 × 103 ly) for Milky Way, constant density, and rotating with a constant angular velocity ωdark to be identified as the ωvis at r. The rigid body part could be associated with a separate closed string or correspond to a knot of a long cosmic string giving rise to most of the galactic dark matter.

    Remark: The existence of rigid body part is serious problem for dark matter as halo approach and known as core-cusp problem.

    For ρ<r stars could correspond to sub-knots of a knotted galactic string and vrot would correspond to the rotation velocity of dark matter at r when self-gravitation of the knotty structure is neglected. Taking it into account would increase vrot by 4 per cent to vmax. One would have ωdark= vmax/r.

  2. The universal rotation period of galaxy, call it T∼ 1 Gy, is assigned with the edge of the galaxy and calculated as T= v(Redge)/Redge. The first guess is that the the radius of the edge is Redge=R, where R∈ (1-1.8)× 105 ly (30-54 kpc) is the radius of the Milky Way. For v(R)= vrot∼ 240 km/s one has T∼ .225 Gy, which is by a factor 1/4 smaller that T=1 Gy. Taking the estimate T=1 Gy at face value one should have Redge=4R.

    One could understand the slowing down of the rotation if the dark matter above ρ>r corresponds to long - say U-shaped as TGD inspired quantum biology suggests - non-rigid loops emanating from the rigid body part. Non-rigidy would be due to the thickening of the flux tube reducing the contribution of Kähler magnetic energy to the string tension - the volume contribution would be extremely small by the smallness of cosmological constant like parameter multiplying it.

  3. The velocity spectrum of stars for Milky Way is such that the rotation period Tvis=ρ/vvis(ρ) is quite generally considerably shorter than T=1 Gy. The discrepancy is from 1 to 2 orders of magnitude. The vvis(ρ) varies by only 17 per cent at most and has two minima (200 km/s and 210 km/s) and eventually approaches vrot=240 km/s.

    The simplest option is that the rotation v(ρ) velocity of dark matter in the range [r,R] is in the first approximation same as that of visible matter and in the first approximation constant. The angular rotation ω would decrease roughly like r/ρ from ωmax to ωrot=2π/T: for Milky Way this would mean reduction by a factor of order 10-2. One could understand the slowing down of the rotation if the dark matter above ρ>r corresponds to long - say U-shaped as TGD inspired quantum biology suggests - non-rigid loops emanating from the rigid body part. Non-rigidity would be due to the thickening of the flux tube reducing the contribution of Kähler magnetic energy to the string tension - the volume contribution would be extremely small by the smallness of cosmological constant like parameter multiplying it.

    If the stars form sub-knots of the galactic knot, the rotational velocities of dark matter flux loops and visible matter are same. This would explain why the spectrum of velocities is so different from that predicted by Kepler law for visible matter as the illustration of the Wikipedia article shows (see this). Second - less plausible - option is that visible matter corresponds to closed flux loops moving in the gravitational field of cosmic string and its knotty part, and possibly de-reconnected (or "evaporated") from the flux loops.

    What about the situation for ρ>R? Are stars sub-knots of galactic knot having loops extending beyond ρ=R. If one assumes that the differentially rotating dark matter loops extend only up to ρ=R, one ends up with a difficulty since vvis(ρ) must be determined by Kepler's law above ρ=R and would approach vrot from above rather from below. This problem is circumvented if the loops can extend also to distances longer than R.

  4. Asymptotic constant rotation velocity vrot for visible matter at r>R is in good approximation proportional to the square root of string tension Ts defining the density per unit length for the dark matter and dark energy of string. vrot= (2GTs)1/2 is determined from Kepler's law in the gravitational field of string. In the article R is identified as the size of galactic disk containing stars and gas.

  5. The universality of T (no dependence on the size R of the galaxy) is guaranteed if the ratio R/r is universal for given string tension Ts. This would correspond to scaling invariance. To my opinion one can however challenge the idea about universality of T since its identification is far from obvious. Rather, the period at r would be universal if the angular velocity ω and perhaps also r are universal in the sense that they depend on the string tension Ts of the galactic string only.

The above argument is purely classical. One can consider the situation also quantally.
  1. The notion of gravitational Planck constant hgr introduced first by Nottale is central in TGD, where dark matter corresponds to a hierarchy of Planck constants heff=n × h. One would have

    hbargr= GM2/v0.

    for the magnetic flux tubes connecting masses M and m and carrying dark matter. For flux loops from M back to M one would have

    hbargr= GM2/v0.

    v0 is a parameter with dimensions of velocity. The first guess is v0 =vrot, where vrot corresponds to the rotation velocity of distant stars - roughly vrot=4× 10-3c/5. Distant stars would be associated with the knots of the flux tubes emanating from the rigid body part of dark matter, and T=.25 Gy is obtained for v0= R/vrot in the case of Milky Way. The universality of r/R guaranteeing the universality of T would reduce to the universality of v0.

  2. Assume quantization of dark angular momentum with unit hgr for the galaxy. Using L = Iω, where I= MR2/2 is moment of inertia, this gives

    MR2ω/2= L = m×hbargr =2m×GM2/v0

    giving

    ω= 2m×hbargr/MR2 = 2m×GM/(R2v0)= m× 2πggal/v0 , m=1,2,.. ,

    where ggal= GM/πR2 is surface gravity of galactic disk.

    If the average surface mass density of the galactic disk and the value of m do not depend on galaxy, one would obtain constant ω as observed (m=1 is the first guess but also other values can be considered).

  3. For the rotation period one obtains

    T= v0/m×ggal, m=1,2,...

    Does the prediction make sense for Milky Way? For M= 1012MSun represents a lower bound for the mass of Milky Way (see this). The upper bound is roughly by a factor 2 larger. For M=1012MSun the average surface gravity ggal of Milky Way would be approximately ggal ≈ 10-10g for R= 105 ly and by a factor 1/4 smaller for R= 2× 105 ly. Here g=10 m/s2 is the acceleration of gravity at the surface of Earth. m=1 corresponds to the maximal period.

    For the upper bound M= 1.5× 1012MSun of the Milky Way mass (see this) and larger radius R=2× 105 ly one obtains T≈ .23× 109/m years using v0=vrot(R/r), R=180r and vrot=240 km/s.

  4. One can criticize this argument since the rigid body approximation fails. Taking into account the dependence v=vrotR/ρ in the the integral defining total angular momentum as 2π (M/π R2) ∫ v(ρ) ρ2 dρ= Mω R2 rather than Mω R2/2 so that the value of ω is reduced by factor 1/2 and the value of T increases by factor 2 to T=.46/m Gy which is rather near to the claimed value of 1 Gy..

To sum up, the quantization argument combined with the classical argument discussed first allows to relate the value of T to the average surface gravity of the galactic disk and predict reasonably well the value of T.

See the article Four new strange effects associated with galaxies or the chapter TGD and astrophysics.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.

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