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On the mass scales we talk about, even small rocks would add up and lead to an observable dimming.

Nebulae usually are usually even less dense, just a few molecules per cubic metre, but they are still easily observable.




I ran some numbers, for the Milky Way[1], the visible matter is roughly 1e11 solar masses, while the dark matter halo contains[2] about 1-2e12 solar masses (depends on your cut-off), I'll use 1e12.

The moon is about 3.7e-8 solar masses[3], so you' need about 2.7e19 of these "rocks" to make up the Milky Way dark matter halo. For comparison the Milky Way has about 250e9 stars[4].

So we're talking over 100 million "cold rocks" per star in our galaxy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter_halo#Milky_Way_dar...

[2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.06409

[3]: https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+of+the+moon+in+solar+ma...

[4]: https://public.nrao.edu/ask/how-many-stars-do-the-andromeda-...


Nebulae are an argument in favor. They are observable b/c they're not dense. They have a very high surface area to mass ratio. Light passes through them and they have absorption spectrum. They also emit a lot of black body radiation.

By contrast a moon size object has a very low surface area to mass ration. It has no absorption spectrum b/c light can't pass through - and any black body radiation would be negligible b/c of relatively small surface area




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