Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2016/s26/3/2/solution

The 21.1 cm line is neutral hydrogen's hyperfine spin-flip transition, observed with radio telescopes and interferometers in the cool/warm neutral gas disk, often beyond the bright stellar disk. The mean wavelength gives and, using the stated low-redshift Hubble approximation, Mpc. A 16-arcsecond angular radius gives kpc. For a thin circular disk, , so from face-on.
The original spectrum reaches roughly 21.98 and 22.02 cm: km s. Deprojecting gives . A spherical dynamical estimate gives . A thin massive disk is not spherical: its exact rotation-to-total-mass coefficient depends on radial mass profile. The no-exterior-matter assumption does not uniquely fix that coefficient, so the quoted result is the conventional order-of-magnitude dynamical estimate. Cosmological luminosity and angular-diameter distances differ at this redshift; the source's simple Hubble-distance convention is being used consistently.

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