Say dark matter particles do permeate the solar system but continue to escape direct detection. Would we ever be able to detect their mass by the gravitational effects on bodies within the solar system?
I realize the density of dark matter must be extremely low or we would have noticed it before, but I don’t have a sense of how far below detectability it is. Is it, say, orders of magnitude below anything we could ever hope to measure? Or, perhaps, could it conceivably be done with known technology?
I’ll give you a free bump, because it’s an interesting question.
As an add-on to your question, because it needs to be answered to answer your question, what would the distribution of of dark matter in the Solar System be expected to be? I could see where Jupiter and the other planets would stir it up, so that it’s not uniform at all. Another possibility would be that there are large pockets of higher and lower density throughout the galaxy, and whether we’re in a relatively denser or thinner one is more or less random, and not due to effects from our Solar System at all.
If the dark matter was fairly uniformly distributed, or distributed in a spherically-symmetrical way about the sun (say if it was composed of particles that don’t couple to visible matter very well, except through gravity), we might be able to detect it in the periods of the planets. The periods of outer planets would be faster than would be otherwise predicted because they would be orbiting a more massive clump of matter than inner planets.
Did you try Googling this? By typing in “dark matter influence on solar system” I’m getting alot of hits. Since Google shows different results for each user, I’ll paste a couple of the more interesting:
No bother. Lord knows I’ve had my own experiences of being totally unable to find something simply because I used the wrong terms. Besides, we have some people around here who could very well be doing their own original research on the topic…