When a photon is released, which way does it head?

[tar]

Was in the middle of reading a thread on the double slit experiment and sometimes the discussion was about photons and sometimes about electrons.

Seems to me an electron is a different thing than a photon.

 

In school I learned that an electon would drop from one energy level to another and release a photon of light of a particular wavelength and amplitude that was always a multiple of a single quantum of energy.

 

What I never was told was what direction this pulse was released in, and always imagined it was going out in all directions like a 3-D ripple similar to the ripple in a pond caused by a pebble dropped into it.

 

But if a photon can not be divided into a smaller than one quantum package, how can it be "going out" in all directions? It would quickly be divided in an inverse cubed way to an energy less than one quantum, projected in any particular vector.

 

The collapsing of the wave function suggested by the "arrival" of a photon, at an observer, suggests that the energy imparted on the electron at the arrival end, boosting it to a higher energy level, is now NOT available in any of the other directions the spherical wave was expanding into.

 

The direction exactly opposite the direction in which the photon was felt, is now devoid of a pulse which it contained an instant before the wave collapsed.

 

Or does a photon actually get released in a particular direction?

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

It goes in a random direction. When you have enough of them you see light transmitted in all directions.

[tar]

Strange,

 

Well that is good to know. It releives the problem of considering the impossible situation of the impulse going out in all directions. But why "random"? If an electron is on its way around the nucleus of its atom and looses a photon of energy, would the pulse not be more likely to "go out" in the direction corresponding to the "side" of the atom the electron was on at instant it lost the photon?

 

Additionally the question still remains as to how expansive the wave front of a photon that has gone out in one direction, is. That is, does the wavefront expand in a spherical way in that direction, as the analogy of a wave on a pond would? In a hokey cartoon of the double slit experiment, the waves that proceeded from the emitter went out in an expanding circle, and once through the slit, out in an expanding circle again. In an analogy of photon flight in 3-D space, this would give us back the original problem of the energy of the photon getting dispersed to less than a quantum's worth.

 

Unless the "shot pattern" of the photon was limited to a certain arc area. But even that would cause the same conceptual problem, because once you got far enough out, the arc area would be massive, and the pulse would be dispersed over the area, again to less than a quantum's worth at any given electron sized location it could potentially "hit". So I would imagine the photon, having gone out in a particular random direction, would not spread out, but retain itself in some particular sized packet of energy, that would exist in a particularly sized area of space, in that direction, one moment, and exist in a similarly sized area of space a little further along that vector, the next moment...until it "hit" an electron in an atom in that "path" and boosted it up an energy level, thereby ending the flight of that particular photon.

 

If this model is true, do we know the "size" and shape of the packet of energy that is a photon?

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

Well that is good to know. It releives the problem of considering the impossible situation of the impulse going out in all directions. But why "random"? If an electron is on its way around the nucleus of its atom and looses a photon of energy, would the pulse not be more likely to "go out" in the direction corresponding to the "side" of the atom the electron was on at instant it lost the photon?

 

You seem to be thinking of the electron as a little ball in orbit (it isn't). You are also assuming that this will affect the direction of the photon (I have no idea if it does or not).

 

But I'm not sure either of those make much difference. The time at which the electron changes its energy level is random and therefore its position/direction will be random as well.

 

 

Additionally the question still remains as to how expansive the wave front of a photon that has gone out in one direction, is.

 

A wavefront applies to the classical view of light. This requires large numbers of photons. A single photon doesn't have a wavefront, it is a point particle.

 

The probability distribution of the photon (before it is detected) will be a sphere (*); but the photon will only be detected at a single point within that.

 

(*) Unless it is modified by your comments about the position of the electron in the atom. Does the shape of the electron orbital affect the direction that a photon is likely to be emitted? I don't know.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Strange

[swansont]

The direction is random but not isotropic — there will be an angular dependence. A dipole does not radiate along its axis

[tar]

So,

 

When it comes to an atom, 250 million light years from here, dropping an energy level and releasing a photon in the exact vector direction that would take the point particle photon to Earth, the odds are very small that such a particle would make it to a cone or rod at the back of your tiny eye, here on Earth. The angular size of the lens of a person's eye, or even a 150 inch telescope, at the distance of 250 light years is very very tiny.

 

Makes me think that dark matter might indeed be releasing photons, just not enough of them in this direction, for us to get a continual supply from the same source, enough to say we see the thing.

 

For instance, say I had the ability to launch 10 photons, each in exactly the direction I wanted to launch them. What are the odds that even one of them would hit an alien eye. Such hypothetical eyes are so small, angular size wise, that the odds are much better that the photons would travel to some electron clouding around some atom somewhere, and boost it up to another energy level, and never be detected by a sentient being's equipment.

 

So there could be "dark matter" about that would earn its name by the simple fact that it never got any of the photons it released to go in the right direction to hit a human's equipment.

 

Regards. TAR

Edited August 10, 2014 by tar

[tar]

Additionally, considering this geometrical constraint on viewing far away things, one can "visualize" the effect of a relatively small item "between" your eye and a more distant item. If the item is not transparent, a photon won't go through it. The item will absorb the photon. You cannot see through a wall. Even fog creates a visual barrier to photons, absorbing and scattering them, to where the original photons coming from a distant item, never reach your eye. Such is the condition we face when attempting to peer beyond the Milky Way in the direction of its center. We can not see past the dust and stars and black hole in its center. No photon makes it through from emitters directly behind. Geometerically speaking a non transparent item the size of a basketball, placed directly infront of your eye, blocks every photon coming from the entire large percentage of the universe that lies behind.

 

A basketball placed a mile away blocks a very small percentage of the universe from view, but whole far away planets could fit behind it, and whole further away galaxies as well. Seems the same behavior would exhibit itself considering a dust particle a light year from here. No photon coming from directly behind it gets past it, effectively blocking a cone shaped section, (starting from the dust particle) of universe from our view. This reverse shadow would move as the particle or the eye in question would move...but the photons we do see, coming from any quadrant of space, are just the "survivors" among the population of photons that started out coming in the direction of our eye. Then there is the larger population of photons, that started out, going in some other direction.

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

So,

 

When it comes to an atom, 250 million light years from here, dropping an energy level and releasing a photon in the exact vector direction that would take the point particle photon to Earth, the odds are very small that such a particle would make it to a cone or rod at the back of your tiny eye, here on Earth. The angular size of the lens of a person's eye, or even a 150 inch telescope, at the distance of 250 light years is very very tiny.

 

Makes me think that dark matter might indeed be releasing photons, just not enough of them in this direction, for us to get a continual supply from the same source, enough to say we see the thing.

 

For instance, say I had the ability to launch 10 photons, each in exactly the direction I wanted to launch them. What are the odds that even one of them would hit an alien eye. Such hypothetical eyes are so small, angular size wise, that the odds are much better that the photons would travel to some electron clouding around some atom somewhere, and boost it up to another energy level, and never be detected by a sentient being's equipment.

 

So there could be "dark matter" about that would earn its name by the simple fact that it never got any of the photons it released to go in the right direction to hit a human's equipment.

 

Regards. TAR

 

I don't think you're appreciating the scale of this. Just a microwatt of visible light has a few hundred billion (10¹¹) photons/sec in it. A single atom resonantly scattering light can easily do so a million times a second. A single gram of some atom has 10²¹ - 10²² atoms in it.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

No, you are right, I was not appreciating the scale.

 

However, although the single atom could be receiving and emitting a million photons in a second, that particular atom, as a point of origin for a photon, has a large amount of directions in which it can cast its photons. Even if you considered the amount of atom size areas you could paint on the inside of a basketball, an atom emitting photons from the center of the basketball, at a million per second, would have to emit photons for quite a large number of seconds, to ensure that one photon has reached each of the atom sized areas painted on the inside of the ball. So for that one atom to send a photon to a particular atom a mile away, would be only a very small chance occurence. A hundred miles away even less. A light year away, would not be likely at all.

 

I suppose in pointing out that I am not considering the scale, you are saying that even though the one atom has little chance of sending a photon in the direction of an eye 250 lys or 250 million lys away, there are many many atoms in a given star, and since we see a star, it has to be producing so many photons, that the rest of the universe, in ALL directions is awash in them.

 

Heard once that the light of a match (given provided oxygen) on a new moon, could be seen from Earth at night. Suppose that means that the scale of photon emissions from even that small collection of atoms at the tip of the match, is immense. For my little eye is very far from the moon. And for me to see it, means that the same number of photons from it are bathing EVERY area the size of my lens, at that Moon-Earth distance...continually, for the whole duration of the burn. That is a lot of photons, indeed.

 

Regards, TAR

[physica]

Basically summing up what's been said, yes statistical mechanics works. This concept was formulated in 1906. If you're interested in reading up on it the schrodinger equation maps the probability of a particle in quantum. Considering the amount of particles in a quantum system the number is very statistically significant giving a very accurate prediction based on probability.

Edited August 11, 2014 by physica

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

No, you are right, I was not appreciating the scale.

 

However, although the single atom could be receiving and emitting a million photons in a second, that particular atom, as a point of origin for a photon, has a large amount of directions in which it can cast its photons. Even if you considered the amount of atom size areas you could paint on the inside of a basketball, an atom emitting photons from the center of the basketball, at a million per second, would have to emit photons for quite a large number of seconds, to ensure that one photon has reached each of the atom sized areas painted on the inside of the ball. So for that one atom to send a photon to a particular atom a mile away, would be only a very small chance occurence. A hundred miles away even less. A light year away, would not be likely at all.

 

I suppose in pointing out that I am not considering the scale, you are saying that even though the one atom has little chance of sending a photon in the direction of an eye 250 lys or 250 million lys away, there are many many atoms in a given star, and since we see a star, it has to be producing so many photons, that the rest of the universe, in ALL directions is awash in them.

 

Heard once that the light of a match (given provided oxygen) on a new moon, could be seen from Earth at night. Suppose that means that the scale of photon emissions from even that small collection of atoms at the tip of the match, is immense. For my little eye is very far from the moon. And for me to see it, means that the same number of photons from it are bathing EVERY area the size of my lens, at that Moon-Earth distance...continually, for the whole duration of the burn. That is a lot of photons, indeed.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Yes, we're not seeing individual atoms a light year away, we're seeing stars. The sun, as an example, emits more than 10²⁶ Watts, which is around 10⁴³ photons/sec.

 

Another thing to consider with your basketball example is while the ball blocks light sources, it's not true that there are no photons coming from the ball. It's a thermal source. If it blocks (absorbs) light, it will heat up and its emission spectrum will shift, because it's temperature dependent.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

Well the 10 to the 43 photons per second, I would imagine is in "all" directions. Enough I am sure to create the heliopause and solar wind and such within the solar system. But once you get out to comet land there are probably not incredible numbers of photons hitting per square cm per sec. Or maybe the number is still incredible, but would wain as you went out a couple light years to the distance of a neighboring star, Still large though, since enough photons are coming from that neighboring star for me to see it with my little eyes, but it does not seem to me that distant stars from many galaxy diameters away, in other galaxies are likely to send too many photons per second into my eye. The numbers are immense, but the distances are vast, and the diameter of the imaginary sphere around a way distant star that intersected with the Earth would be quite large, imagining the scalewise.

 

I am thinking that the numbers per second are diluted twice, once by the distance and once by the time. Imagining how infrequently a photon would be released again on exactly the same path, from the same atom, and how far behind the second one would be, from the first. But you are right, that we don't see an atom, we see a star, which is more like a wall than a a point, when it comes to places that a photon could come from, toward our eye.

 

Still, the basketball blocks the original photons, and the new ones released are coming from the basketball not the star. At that point, you would not know if the energy that boosted an electron up a notch in one of the basketball's atoms, was from a nearby star, or a neighboring galaxy, or a galaxy cluster 250 million light years away, or from a quasar that emitted the photon that boosted the electron up, which was shining when the universe was a quarter of its age...or even it could have been a photon stretched to radio frequency that came from when the universe was first transparent.

 

In anycase, the basketball blocks your view and absorbs the photons coming from stuff behind.

 

I am wondering now about a photon emitted from an atom in the center of Sun. Does it make it out? Or does it hit an electron in another helium/hydrogen atom and boost it up a notch, allowing it to fall back down and release another photon, which may or may not travel outward, as it has just as much of a chance to randomly head toward the center again.

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

Once you start thinking in these terms (light from distant bodies, light being absorbed and re-emitted, etc.) it may be better to take a "classical" view (lightwaves) rather than trying to work out what happens to individual photons.

[tar]

Strange,

 

You are probably right.. In some ways, light has emergent properties, that exhibit characteristics, when hoards of photons are considered, that are not present in a single photon.

 

You cannot really grasp flock behavior by considering single bird characteristics. And so trying to grasp light behavior by looking at single photons is probably not sufficient.

 

Still a flock would not be a flock would single birds not be behaving in some manner. They each have certain abilities and limitations, which direct and constrain the behavior of the flock. And so, what light can do, or not do, has a certain relationship to what a single photon can or can not do.

 

In some ways the photon is an impulse that travels from place to place, like the ripple in a pond. Riding or being the electrical and magnetic wave that it is. The particle/wave duality is not unlikey to be present in a single photon. It does not take a hoard of photons to have characteristics that a single photon can not suggest or act as a basis of.

 

Perhaps a photon is to light, as an electron is to electricity. Electricity moves through a wire as an impulse. Power getting from one end of a wire to another, without an actual electron making it from one end to the other. Like the hanging steel balls where you drop the one against the five and the one on the other end pops off.

 

A photon transfers its energy to the first electron it encounters, which happily releases another photon in quick order. All happening at scales so tiny and quick we can not grasp the speed of the exchange or the number of exchanges it took to get the impulse from there to here, over vast distances at the speed of light.

 

SwansonT is right. I am not grasping the scale.

 

Regards, TAR

The curtain on the window moves when the door opens. And moves again when it shuts.

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

Well the 10 to the 43 photons per second, I would imagine is in "all" directions. Enough I am sure to create the heliopause and solar wind and such within the solar system. But once you get out to comet land there are probably not incredible numbers of photons hitting per square cm per sec. Or maybe the number is still incredible, but would wain as you went out a couple light years to the distance of a neighboring star, Still large though, since enough photons are coming from that neighboring star for me to see it with my little eyes, but it does not seem to me that distant stars from many galaxy diameters away, in other galaxies are likely to send too many photons per second into my eye. The numbers are immense, but the distances are vast, and the diameter of the imaginary sphere around a way distant star that intersected with the Earth would be quite large, imagining the scalewise.

 

 

There's no need to hand-wave this. We have math.

 

If you go 10 AU from the sun, the flux into a cm² will drop by a little more than 10³⁰, so you'll have 10¹³ photons/sec. That's still a lot.

 

Go out a light year and the flux drops by a factor of 10³⁷. Still a million photons a second. A thousand light years is a thousand photons per second. That's why we can see local stars. (Some stars, of course, are brighter than the sun and some are dimmer)

 

Galaxies are much further away, but also have many more stars. Go out a million light years but gather the light from a trillion stars and it's still a thousand photons a second.

 

Telescopes use a larger area to gather more photons. A 1m telescope nominally gathers 7850 times as many photons as a bare 1 cm² detector.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

Well thanks for the math, so I can put my hands on the keyboard.

 

But if you don't consider a trillion suns but just one at a million lys, there are just a few photons a sec hitting that square cm.

 

For items smaller and less photon emitting prone than a sun, that are a million lys away, a photon from it would come along onto that square cm, only once in a long while. Still would come along, but not in a regular enough way, that we would notice, without careful record keeping and "image processing". Rare enough to "miss" the import of.

 

And as well the photon coming from a million lys away is old news, and represents an electron falling from an energy level some million years ago. The item which launched the thing has done a million years of evolving and emitting photons in the mean time.

 

To a certain degree, the old thing we imagine is releasing the photons that we see today, is more "real" to us, than the actual items a million lyrs from here, in that direction, that we will not get sight of, or news from, for another million years. Enoughly real to consider what we see a million lys from here as existing and happening now.

 

I am considering that the photons that are bathing us from all directions, are the real aspects of those far away emitters, as far as we are concerned. The photons that are hitting our eyes are our connection to the thing, and that connection is happening now. You can't actually get to any vantage point that would be realer than those photons we are getting tonight. The galaxies that we see tonight in the configuration we see them in, is how they are configured, now. Even though they have actually had quite a long time to actually have gotten into some other configuration, by now.

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

 

But if you don't consider a trillion suns but just one at a million lys, there are just a few photons a sec hitting that square cm.

 

 

But we don't see those with out eyes, because they are too dim. You have to do a long exposure with a telescope to gather enough photons..

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

Well, granted. The point being that a photon now and one later, coming from the same general direction is "built" into an image.

 

Similar, in a way, to the way a human percieves. Filling in the blanks, completing the image, completing the pattern, with just a few pieces of info.

 

At very large distances the photons that headed in this direction are an exceedingly small percentage of the photons released by the item, and we could easily be mistaken about the image we build, based upon the few that get to our equipment.

 

I was wondering a few days ago, based upon considerations brought up here, whether it would be useful to construct a flat grid that had small black tubes for light absorbtion with a ccd at the end of each tube. Photons coming in from directions other than the direction the tube array was pointed in, would be absorbed by the sides of the tube and only ones coming directly down the tube would reach the ccd. If the tubes were very long and very straight and very thin, only photons from an exact direction would be sensed. A very large array of this could be built. And multiple arrays of this nature could be built and pointed in the same direction, and the info gleened by the ccds could be combined with other devices of the same sort, pointed in the same direction, by communication and computer programs to "build" an image with the photons coming from just that direction.

 

Regards, TAR

In real time.

[Strange]

I have a vague recollection of an SF story (from the '50s, '60s?) that used his idea to build a powerful telescope that could observe life on other planets ... or something.

 

Of course it would be less effective than, say, a mirror or lens, as most of the light is lost. Although, I have another vague recollection of seeing something else recently using carbon nanotubes...

[swansont]

 

I was wondering a few days ago, based upon considerations brought up here, whether it would be useful to construct a flat grid that had small black tubes for light absorbtion with a ccd at the end of each tube. Photons coming in from directions other than the direction the tube array was pointed in, would be absorbed by the sides of the tube and only ones coming directly down the tube would reach the ccd. If the tubes were very long and very straight and very thin, only photons from an exact direction would be sensed. A very large array of this could be built. And multiple arrays of this nature could be built and pointed in the same direction, and the info gleened by the ccds could be combined with other devices of the same sort, pointed in the same direction, by communication and computer programs to "build" an image with the photons coming from just that direction.

 

Regards, TAR

In real time.

 

No need to do that. A focusing element (lens or mirror set) accomplishes the same thing, with the advantage that the CCD can be smaller than the aperture.

[imatfaal]

However, in whatever way you gather light you are still bound by limits of resolution. To resolve objects in visible light of a metre from a lightyear needs a light gathering surface (either singular or multiple) of around 10^8 metres diameter

[tar]

imatfaal,

 

So once you consider rocks and ice chunks floating around in the galaxy about a metre in diameter, out further than a ly we are not liable to build any light gathering equipment able to "see" them illuminated by starlight. Dark matter could just be ordinary matter, to small and far away to see.

 

And hypothetically if the grid tube Idea is used and the tubes were long enough and narrow enough and precise enough and built exactly parallel to each other, it would not matter how far away the object you were directing the grid toward, was, the light coming down two tubes a foot apart would hypothetically, with an extreme precision granted, be the light coming from two locations on the object, a foot apart.

 

Regards, TAR

(too small)

[Strange]

So once you consider rocks and ice chunks floating around in the galaxy about a metre in diameter, out further than a ly we are not liable to build any light gathering equipment able to "see" them illuminated by starlight. Dark matter could just be ordinary matter, to small and far away to see.

(too small)

 

There are a number of problems with this idea. Large lumps of matter would be heated by radiation and would then emit their own thermal radiation. As there would have to be a large amount of this "stuff", this would be detectable (even if any individual piece were too small to see).

 

Also, they would tend to interact (virialize) and settle down into the plane of the galaxy; that is not how dark matter is distributed (because it doesn't interact except via gravity). My limited understanding is that over time they would collide and break up, likely forming a plasma and distinctive radiation.

 

Also, where would all these large lumps of rock and ice come from? Remember that basically all elements above hydrogen come from supernovae.

 

Note that many possibilities have been considered and tested for explaining dark matter. From clouds of gas, to dust, to larger objects, to black holes. None work, for a variety of reasons.

[tar]

Strange,

 

I never heard about the "settling down into the plane of the galaxy" thing. Seems like there is a gravitational item (dark matter) that does not do this, as ordinary matter would. However, even though all the gas and dust and clumps of matter models have problems, the "dark matter" idea in general has problems. One of the big ones, in my mind, is the fact that we have done so well without it, for our entire history, up to a few decades ago. How did we miss it before?

 

I was, for many years, a troubleshooter. Answered a hotline, where experienced techs called to get solutions to tough problems. We often, (almost all the time) found solutions where others were baffled. We had each other, and the engineers that designed the equipment, at our disposal...I had a rule, sort of a joke rule, but a workable one..."its got to be something".

 

I understand that various "ordinary matter" models have been discounted, for one reason or another, and things keep pointing to the existence of some "other" type of matter that has magical properties, and does not fit exactly with everything else we know...but, this non fitting with everything else we know, is a problem. As serious a problem as dark matter not seeming to fall into the plane of the galaxy with everything else. Enough of of problem to consider if there is some aspect of the problem that we are not considering correctly.

 

I have this "feeling" that the size of galaxy and the universe beyond, is not condusive to holding a working model in ones head.

 

What I mean by this, is that when we build a mathematical model, there are certain portions of it that are at the scales that SwansonT knows I do not grasp. Certain portions that are not properly factored in to the model. Certain portions where a "switch" of perspective should be engaged and is not, or is engage when it should not be.

 

In this mode of "looking for" an answer, I present the geometrical nature of the universe, and in particular the direction upon which a released photon starts out on its course. For every item in the universe that has ever released a photon, is currently releasing a photon, or will in the future release a photon, only one in a zillion head directly toward your eye. The others, go some other way. All the other ways.

 

In this condition, that a single person is in, as a focal point and receptor of photons, from an entire universe, we can build back the reality the universe must be in, based on the small portion of photons that come our way. But we have to make transformations and understand when it is that we are seeing the image, and when it is we are imagining the thing, based upon the image we receive.

 

If dark matter is a mysterious type of stuff, that exists everywhere, but not like what we expect, then it exists here and now as well. In between the center of the Galaxy and us, inbetween the nearest star and us, inbetween the Sun and the Earth, inbetween the clouds and our eyes, inbetween the TV and our eyes, inbetween our hands if we hold them a foot apart, inbetween our thumb and forefinger should we hold them an inch apart, and inbetween the molecules we gaze at under an electron microscope.

 

If such a thing was around, we would not have missed it...all these years. If it was real, it would now be explaining stuff, that always perplexed us before, not perplex us where we before understood.

 

Presentation here, is just trying to "imagine" the universe that way it is, the way it has to be, the way that "works" with no problems, one way or the other.

 

Regards, TAR

There is an infinity of directions one can imagine, from a point. An infinity of directions in which a photon can leave an atom. An electron in an atom in Cleveland could shed its photon toward my left eye in New Jersey, or toward my right eye, or toward my nose.

 

This "type" of thing, the shedding of photons, goes on all the time, everywhere, and alway has and will for the forseeable future.

 

When imagining distant galaxies, at the same time as imagining distant stars in our own, at the same time as looking at the lamp across the room, there is a time concern that is not necessarily correctly imagined, consistently across the board. The "position" of the elements we "see", as a consequence of a photon reaching our equipment, is not probably correct, now, as if one could rely upon the thing being where and how it appears now...actually.

 

The far away stuff is wrong, in this geometrical sense. It is not "actually" in that direction, necessarily, at the moment.

 

Do the calculations of galaxy spin, especially galaxies 250 million lys from here, take these large scale problems securely into account? Are are the proper transformations made? There is, after all, quite a time lag between the photons coming from this side of a distant galaxy and the other side of a distant galaxy. Enough perhaps to cause an optical/mental illusion.

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

One of the big ones, in my mind, is the fact that we have done so well without it, for our entire history, up to a few decades ago. How did we miss it before?

Because we only relatively recently had measurements accurately to show the discrepancies.

 

I understand that various "ordinary matter" models have been discounted, for one reason or another, and things keep pointing to the existence of some "other" type of matter that has magical properties

It has no magical properties. There is absolutely nothing magical about it at all. Why do you make up stupid straw-man arguments like that?

 

As serious a problem as dark matter not seeming to fall into the plane of the galaxy with everything else.

 

That is not a problem at all. It is exactly what is expected of dark matter. How about that: this "magical" material behaves exactly as predicted by physics.

 

I have this "feeling" that the size of galaxy and the universe beyond, is not condusive to holding a working model in ones head.

 

A feeling is of very little value. Unless backed up by theory and evidence.

 

What I mean by this, is that when we build a mathematical model, there are certain portions of it that are at the scales that SwansonT knows I do not grasp.

 

So you admit the problem is with your understanding.

 

Certain portions that are not properly factored in to the model.

 

 

How can you claim that when you don't understand the model and admit you cannot grasp the things that you think are missing. Again, the problem appears to be with you and your understanding, not with the science.

 

If dark matter is a mysterious type of stuff, that exists everywhere, but not like what we expect, then it exists here and now as well. In between the center of the Galaxy and us, inbetween the nearest star and us, inbetween the Sun and the Earth, inbetween the clouds and our eyes, inbetween the TV and our eyes, inbetween our hands if we hold them a foot apart, inbetween our thumb and forefinger should we hold them an inch apart, and inbetween the molecules we gaze at under an electron microscope

 

Correct.

 

If such a thing was around, we would not have missed it...all these years.

 

Why not? Look at the density of dark matter and calculate the gravitational effects it would have. Now see if that could be detected.

 

I leave this as an exercise for you because you will learn more that way, than if someone just tells you. (Clue: the correct answer is that the effect will be so small as to be undetectable with current technology.)

 

Presentation here, is just trying to "imagine" the universe that way it is, the way it has to be, the way that "works" with no problems, one way or the other.

I would advise you to stop relying on imagination and learn a little basic science. It will be much more productive.

 

Do the calculations of galaxy spin, especially galaxies 250 million lys from here, take these large scale problems securely into account? Are are the proper transformations made? There is, after all, quite a time lag between the photons coming from this side of a distant galaxy and the other side of a distant galaxy. Enough perhaps to cause an optical/mental illusion.

Why don't you do a bit of simple arithmetic and check if this is a significant factor?