Galactic Kites
Astrophysics of Galaxies
2022-05-24 v1
Abstract
I show that interstellar films of material thinner than a micron, drift away from the Galactic plane as a result of stellar radiation pressure. Such films, whether produced naturally by dust coagulation in proto-planetary disks or artificially by technological civilizations, would accumulate over the age of the Milky-Way and hover above the Galactic disk at a scale-height set gravitationally by the dark matter halo. Limits on scattered starlight imply that this population carries a fraction below 2x10^{-3} of the interstellar medium mass.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.10618,
title = {Galactic Kites},
author = {Abraham Loeb},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.10618},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
4 pages, submitted to an AAS Journal