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The sun rotating around the galaxy

Student 3057 9 years ago updated by Physics Tutorial Center Staff 9 years ago 1

The rotational velocity of our sun around the Galaxy is about 230 km/s, the visible mass contained inside the orbit is about 2*10^40 kg, and the radius of the orbit is about 2.5*10^20 m. Estimate the amount of dark matter within the sun's orbit and its density.


How does dark matter relate to this?

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"Dark matter" refers to matter that we can conclude must be present but can't see. When you solve this problem, you will find the mass of the galaxy and see that it is not equal to (it's much greater than!) 2* 10^40 kg.