Three Largest Stars Identified

mOoZik writes "BBC News is reporting that astronomers have identified the three biggest stars known to science, having diameters of more than 1.5 billion km. If they were located in the same place as our own Sun - at the centre of the Solar System - the stars would stretch out further than the orbit of Jupiter!"

Comments

Britney, Maddona, Streisand

[roseblood]

Eat your hearts out. :) It awes one to think any single object could be so bloody large!

Re:Britney, Maddona, Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

It awes one to think any single object could be so bloody large!

Speak for yourself.

Re:Britney, Maddona, Streisand

[AndyChrist]

I had a teacher with an ego that big.

Re:Britney, Maddona, Streisand

[c1pher]

A star with a huge waistline? One of them has got to be called "Oprah".

no, you're thinking of Michael Moore..

The three widest stars?

[gbulmash]

The three largest stars with huge diameters? That's easy... Louie Anderson, Bruce Bruce, and Roseanne.

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

- Greg

Re:The three widest stars?

[SunFan]

This is Slashdot, did you mean "Try the zeal"?

Re:The three widest stars?

[tuxter]

Don't forget john holmes... he was a HUGE star.

Re:The three widest stars?

[jacksonj04]

I've seen bigger.

No, seriously. Admittedly he wasn't a star though...

Re:The three widest stars?

[rwise2112]

How about Star Jones?

just wondering

[adamruck]

Why wouldn't these huge starts turn into black holes?

Re:just wondering

[roseblood]

Large dosen't mean heavy. LARGE RED stars are going to be very thin, not much density. All of their material will be spread out over quite a large area. A LARGE BLUE star on the other hand, would be quite dense (and short lived...they burn their fuel much faster and die in billiant novas, or if they are TOO heavy, as blackholes.)

Re:just wondering

[Phil Urich]

Just because they're huge in volume doesn't mean that they are huge in density, right? So it's quite possible for them to remain stars without collapsing.

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Green and Yellow stars have the best chance of finding inhabitable planets. Unless of course you are the Silicoids, in which case you can colonize anywhere.

Re:just wondering

[albn]

Why wouldn't these huge starts turn into black holes? This URL may help you

According to the web site: A star of 15 solar masses exhausts its hydrogen in about one-thousandth the lifetime of our sun. It proceeds through the red giant phase, but when it reaches the triple-alpha process of nuclear fusion , it continues to burn for a time and expands to an even larger volume. The much brighter, but still reddened star is called a red supergiant. Betelgeuse , at the shoulder of Orion, is the best-known example. Absolute luminosities may reach -10 magnitude compared to +5 for our sun.

Some of these supergiants are unstable and form the very important Cepheid variables. In their final stages, supergiants may explode into supernovae . The collapse of these massive stars may produce a neutron star or a black hole .

Re:just wondering

[albn]

Oops sorry for the bad links. Anyway, the links are right on the page.

**hides face in shame**

Re:just wondering

[Phil Urich]

ah, apparently you beat me to it. That's pretty much the point; speaking of, that's why our sun won't be going supernova, right? My knowledge is a bit far in the past, now, but I remember learning at some point that the eventual fate that our Sun will endure, ie. swelling out into a red giant or something of that like, then shrinking down and simmering out its final cold years as a white dwarf, is entirely related to exactly that: it's a medium density star, thus it will last a rather average time, and end "not with a bang, but a whimper".

Ah, Sol, bastion of mediocrity. Without which, of course, conditions wouldn't've let us live so comfortably on this rock!

Re:just wondering

[Nogami_Saeko]

And for some more black-hole info:

Black Hole FAQ

And on a side note, it's been a long time since I've watched my DVD of "The Black Hole", so I may have to do that now :). The last time I watched it, I was surprised how dark it was (no pun intended) for a "Disney Movie". May also have explained why I liked it so much as a kid...

N.

Re:just wondering

[Sterling Christensen]

Can a star really be that thin? Doesn't its own gravity dictate a minimum density to maintain that volume?

Re:just wondering

[tm2b]

Light pressure and the heat of fusion.

Stars don't become black holes until they burn up their fuel, collapsing (and perhaps exploding, perhaps even multiple times) in on themselves until they are much more dense than any visible stars. Then, assuming they they haven't blown off so much of their mass that they no longer have enough mass and will instead become a dwarf or a neutron star, they can collapse to become a black hole.

Link: HOW BLACK HOLES ARE FORMED

Re:just wondering

[roseblood]

YES, they can be that thin.

If I may be lazy and just give you a URL:
http://www.astronomynotes.com/evolutn/s5.htm

Re:just wondering

[ortcutt]

Shh... Don't give them any ideas.

Re:just wondering

[techno-vampire]

Alas, there are no green stars. Even if their temperature is such that their radiation peaks there, green has such a narrow band of frequencies that either yellow or blue will always predominate.

Re:just wondering

[ender81b]

I've been wondering why there are no green stars for like years. What a bummer, I think that'd be the coolest star.

Damm you Roy. G. Biv. for not fulfilling my dreams.

Re:just wondering

[tuxter]

It depends, if it's mass exceeds roughly 1.4 (Chandrasekhar limit) solar masses, and it doesn't eject enough of this excess mass when it goes supernova, then yes, in all likelyhood it will form a black hole, but remember it's size we are talking here, not mass. These stars have exhausted all their fuel and therefore run at a lot cooler temperature. Because their mass is less, their gravity is less, enabling them to expand to huge sizes. Sorry about the non formatted URL, but go here if you want more info on black holes/limits etc.
http://www.tamil.net/people/andrew/subra.htm

Re:just wondering

[LuxFX]

ditto! I have always been curious and dissappointed about the lack of pretty emerald stars.

fortunately, since moving to the midwest (Kansas City) and seeing the sun set over flat land instead of the mountains where I used to live, I have now seen sunsets with discernable green bands in them. That was my other hope for green.

Now, if I can just witness a green flash sometime....

Re:just wondering

[physicsphairy]

This is a bit reverse logic, but the reason they don't collapse is because they're still burning.

You can think of the fusion reaction in a sun as it's 'defense' against collapse. The force driving the future collapse, gravity, is what's sustaining the fusion reaction, which creates internal photonic pressure, which in turn pushes the mass of the star outward, counteracting the force of gravity.

The reason these stars are so large is in fact directly related to the photonic pressure produced by this reaction. If the gases are very hot it prevents the gas from codensing, i.e., you need a lot of it (a big star) to combat gravity. Once these go supernovae and leave clouds of elements that burn at a lower temperature, smaller stars will be able to form.

Re:just wondering

[Galahad2]

My understanding is that while these stars are certainly more massive and probably just as dense (if not denser, contrary to what some posters have speculated) than our sun they are much, much hotter. A star can be thought of as a dynamic equilibrium between the force of gravity pulling the material together and the pressure produced by the heat of fusion pushing it apart. Therefore, the bigger a star is, the hotter it must be to equilibriate. This happens naturally, since the kinetics of the fusion reaction are related to the pressure. (That is, as the star collapses under its weight, the rate fusion increases -- that is, until it runs out of energy.) This has an interesting consequence regarding star lifetimes: contrary to what you might expect, the bigger a star is, the shorter its lifetime is, since it has to consume its fuel so much faster.

So to answer your question, the reason these stars don't become black holes is the same as the reason that any supermassive stars don't. The heat produced by fusion. The only difference with these is that they burn their fuel much faster than other stars, and correspondingly, can be expected to snuff it much sooner.

I might be wrong about some of this, but I'm pretty sure most of what I said is true, at least to a first approximation.

Re:just wondering

[SandmanWAIX]

supernovae . The collapse of these massive stars may produce a neutron star or a black hole .

For a detailed example of supernovae -> black hole, click here.

Re:just wondering

[qualico]

Nice link.
I'd mod that up if I had some in the can.

Re:just wondering

[FinestLittleSpace]

to be honest i think the MPPA are one of the main reasons for it not going to supernova.

Re:just wondering

[Eric604]

The amazing thing is, these are not far removed from quantum singularities. Apparently some kind of alien communication relay system was found that was actually harnessing the power of a type 4 quantum singularity. The power output is on the order of one year of our sun's power released every second! The relay is estimated at being around 10,000 years old. Truly fascinating

About these communication relays..
Have you heard of the rumors about the solar relay? It's apparently located in the same area of the type 4 relay and it uses way less energy than a type4 singularity. What is really puzzling is why there are two different relays located in the same area. One explaination is that the pair form a bridge between the relay systems of two different species. It could also be deployed to replace the type4 relay but isn't fully functional yet. It's just rumors but if it's true it explains black holes in a very different way. The energy required for the solar communication relay is captured by enclosing the star by some kind of dark field which produces the exact kind of effects we observed at black holes.

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please explain why destroying the relay station caused a black hole which swallowed and destroyed the hirogen ships, whereas the romulan warbirds (which also use a quantum singularity for power) which routinely get destroyed by federation ships result in only a pyrotechnical display? The mind boggles...

Re:just wondering

[Eric604]

nice troll. FYI: star trek is not real, there is no fedaration. Go watch some DVDs.

Re:just wondering

[Eccles]

Can a star really be that thin?

Yes, but only if it gets lots of sleep.

Re:just wondering

[LWATCDR]

I beleive it is Yellow and Orange dwarfs that are the most likely to have solar systems like ours.
There are no green stars.

Re:just wondering

[b-baggins]

Because there are no such things as black holes. becoming a black hole is like traveling at the speed of light. You can get infinitely close, but you can't reach it.

As the star collapses toward the black hole stage, the increasing gravity begins to warp space producing relativistic effects, including time dilation. From our frame of reference, we will see the star's rate of collapse slow assymptotically, until it seems to stop just at the formation of the event horizon. Mathematically, it would take an infinite amount of time from our viewpoint for a blackhole to actually form.

Re:just wondering

[canofbutter]

Again, not necessarily. Larger stars can keep themselves "up" using a slightly different fusion process (CNO cycle) which has a higher energy output. The larger main sequence stars (above about 1.3 solar masses) use this cycle and have higher energy/hotter core temperatures than a P-P only reaction.

Re:just wondering

[coyote-san]

Stars don't become black holes until they burn up their fuel, collapsing (and perhaps exploding, perhaps even multiple times) in on themselves until they are much more dense than any visible stars.

You might want to check university pages, not just some guy's geocities page.

Stars collapse once the core has exhausted its available fuel. This is only a minute fraction of the star's total mass, but it's critical. When the core goes dark the rest of the star falls on it.

According to an article in Discover magazine a few years ago, parts of the star will fall towards the center with a speed as high as a third of the speed of light! This causes enormous pressure, during the "big crunch" the density of the star may be 5-6 higher than the density of a neutron star. IIRC the massive neutrino flux is produced at this time. BTW this "core" is substantially far larger than the core mentioned earlier.

Matter can't be compressed this hard for long and the core "bounces" back. That is what flings the outer layers of the star into space. But force goes both ways - what throws stellar masses into space also increases the pressure on the remaining core. If the density gets too high a black hole is created and it quickly consumes the core, but the outer layers have already been ejected. Otherwise the core eventually bounces back entirely and you have a neutron star. A neutron star is a core of degenerate matter covered by a layer of normal matter.

You do not get cycles of explosions.

(I seem to recall hearing about flares on neutron stars after enough normal mass has fallen to trigger fusion, but those flares are fall smaller than supernovas.)

Re:just wondering

[jnik]

> certainly more massive
Correct.

> probably just as dense (if not denser
Incorrect, both in the sense of mean density and in the sense of the density of most of the star.

> they are much, much hotter
Incorrect.

> the bigger a star is, the hotter it must be to
> equilibriate
The more massive a star is. Not bigger. The discussion is big in terms in volume. And it's only hotter while it's on the main sequence/during the hydrogen burning phase.

> contrary to what you might expect, the bigger a
> star is, the shorter its lifetime is, since it
> has to consume its fuel so much faster.
True for values of bigger==more massive.

See e.g. Carrol and Ostlie, chapters 10 and 13.

> So to answer your question, the reason these
> stars don't become black holes is the same as
> the reason that any supermassive stars don't.
There is no "reason these stars don't become black holes." They likely are becoming black holes. The reason they aren't black holes is because they haven't gotten there yet. In the global sense, the black hole is a much, much lower energy state than a cloud of hydrogen, so it takes a long time to blow off all that energy.

> The only difference with these is that they burn
> their fuel much faster than other stars,
> and correspondingly, can be expected to snuff it
> much sooner.
Correct.

> I might be wrong about some of this, but I'm
> pretty sure most of what I said is true, at
> least to a first approximation.
Um, better luck next time? :) You also lose points for not mentioning the Eddington limit, which is just so damn cool it should be mentioned in any discussion of stellar dynamics, even if it's not actually explained. (Eta Carinae, you're the one...)

Qualification: I'm a PhD candidate in astronomy. So, although astrophysics isn't my field, I at least know my stuff well enough to pass my comps.

Re:just wondering

[turgid]

Because there are no such things as black holes. becoming a black hole is like traveling at the speed of light. You can get infinitely close, but you can't reach it.

I'm not sure I understand. Can you please provide a reference?

Surely, at the event horizon, all radiation becomes infinitely red-shifted, and I can accept that an observer far away would see a clock slowing down as it went towards the black hole, and stop on the event horizon (or almost stop almost at it).

How does this relate to the actual formation of the black hole?

As the star collapses and becomes more dense, its gravitational field will increase, i.e. spacetime will become more and more stretched, and, like you say, therefore it's collapse may be seen to slow down as the escape velocity of the collapsing star approaches that of light. All radiation emanating will become more and more red-shifted.

Just "at" the event horizon, there should be a "stopped" infinitely red-shifted image of the collapsing star which will last for ever.

However, as far as the collapsing star is concerned, in its own frame of reference, or any part of the star small enough that the curvature of spacetime can be considered negligible, things keep going.

So, how much can we predict about what happens "inside" the event horizon?

Or is that question stupid? It's been 10 years.

Re:just wondering

[Finuvir]

The Sun's output peeks in the green part of the spectrum as far as I remember.

Re:just wondering

[b-baggins]

By definition, a black hole doesn't exist until the event horizon forms. From our frame of reference it would take an infinite time for the event horizon to form.

A more accurate term for a black hole would be a collapsar. A collapsar would be a star collapsing into a black hole. Depending on how long the collapse has been going on, the star would be closer to or further from becoming an actual black hole.

The initial collapse would be very, very rapid, but would slow assymptotically as the point where an event horizon would form approached.

Re:just wondering

[Betelgeuse]

I think you may have your frames wrong. Maybe I'm the one that's wrong, but I feel like the person at the event horizon is the one that sees the time dilation effects.

And how would you explain the fact that black holes are observed (in X-ray binaries, in their most definate form) all over the universe?

Re:just wondering

[yodaj007]

It depends on the mass of the star. Below the Chandrasekhar Limit, a star will collapse into a White Dwarf. Next up is the Neutron Star, then the Quark Star and finally the Black Hole. Becoming a black hole requires a lot of mass, though if I remember right, there is an upper limit on the mass of a star to become a black hole.

Re:just wondering

[b-baggins]

The relativistic effects do change based on your frame of reference. To an observer moving with the collapsing star, the collapse rate would accelerate normally until the black hole formed. However, his perception would be that the outside universe was speeding up until the passage of time outside was infinite.

All other frames of reference would see the collapse slow then eventually stop just outside the event horizon. Those closer to the event horizon would experience time dilation to varying degrees. The universe would run faster, but the collapsing star would still eventually slow and stop, just outside the event horizon.

As far as observing black holes, we really aren't. We're observing the effects of very high surface gravity. This is expected, since it is the intense gravity that is causing the relativistic effects in the first place.

Like I originally pointed out, the collapse would proceed very rapidly at first. It would only be when gravity reached truly tremendous levels and the relativistic effects became very pronounced that you would see the collapse slow and eventually halt.

Without going through the math, I would guess that a collapsar could easily reach 99.99999999 percent of the way to a black hole within a few thousand or a million years. However, it might take another million years to add the next decimal point, and another ten million to add the next one, etc.

When you're 99.999999 percent of the way to a black hole, gravitationally, it's pretty much a difference without a distinction. However, in terms of an event horizon and singularity, where the rules of physics break down, you're nowhere close.

Hope this helps.

Re:just wondering

[Betelgeuse]

OK. Now I'm starting to think that you might be a bit confused. We _do_ observe black holes. Not directly, admittedly, but we do observe big, massive things that emit no light. There have been pretty convincing arguments for stellar-mass black holes in BH binaries and supermassive black holes in galactic centers. I'm not sure how much we know about the supermassive variety, but we're pretty sure we understand how the stellar mass ones form (collapse of Type II Supernovae).

But, it should be pointed out, there is nothing special about the event horizon, from the perspective of an observer falling through it. I mean, we have no idea what's beyond it (since information can never escape), but it's not like an observer falling through it will notice anything special. I know that this is true, from (astrophysics) theory. I'm not sure exactly how the frames work out, but I know that there's no GR argument about stars collapsing into BH's.

Visible black holes?

[Dancin_Santa]

The mass of these stars must be outrageous. Could it be possible that they are already black holes that we are able to see only because we are already within the event horizon of the stars' gravitational pulls?

Re:Visible black holes?

[roseblood]

You know, large dosen't mean heavy. A Peacock feather is alot larger than my wedding ring. My wedding ring is (slightly) heavier though.

Re:Visible black holes?

[mOoZik]

It seems they were able to measure temperature and luminance, thus making them red [super]giants.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Waffle Iron]

Could it be possible that they are already black holes that we are able to see only because we are already within the event horizon of the stars' gravitational pulls?

No.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Phil Urich]

For us to be within the event horizon . . . well, the event horizon is not some magical boundry, it's just the point at which the gravitational pull is so intense that nothing can escape even under the most optimal conditions (ie. being light, basically). So for us to be within the event horizon, well, let's just say that we'd've noticed by now . . .

Re:Visible black holes?

[tm2b]

No.

No, it couldn't.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Rakishi]

Might be tidal forces: the gravitational force is so large that the very small difference between one side of earth and the other is nonetheless enough to rip the planet apart. This is for example what is happening to some of the moons of Jupiter if I remember correctly.

Re:Visible black holes?

[cavetroll]

no. The mass of the stars is big, but they are very far away.

Consider:

density of sun = ~1400 kg/m^3

let us assume these stars have the same density (they don't, it will be lower, but that is ok for our purposes here)
diameter 1.5 billion km = 1.5E12 m

volume (assume a perfect sphere) = 4/3 pi r^3 ~ 1.8E36 cubic metres
giving a mass of 2.5E39Kg (about 1 billion times that of the sun)

the gravitational field strength on an object obeys an inverse square relationship
F=GM/r^2
The nearest of these stars is 5200 light years away, or 5E19 metres
G is the universal gravitational constant, about 7E-11

so
F=7E-11 * 2.5E39 / (5E19*5E19)
F~ 1E-10 N/kg

for comparison, the gravitational field strength on earth is about 10 N/kg, ie 100 billion times larger. /me waits for someone to point out an error in my arithmatic

Re:Visible black holes?

[techno-vampire]

I asked a mathmatical astrononer about that once. Anything inside the event horizon will be drawn into the singularity at the center in seconds at the most.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked a mathmatical astrononer about that once. Anything inside the event horizon will be drawn into the singularity at the center in seconds at the most.

Seconds? From whose perspective?

Re:Visible black holes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Question is a bit weird.

but I'll try to answer it in the most intelligent way I can.

Gravity is supposed to travel at the speed of light. So if we can observe the light from these large stars, they are still fusion powered light sources as far as we are concerned. So, no - not black holes (yet).

As measured by the astronomers, the distance between us and these stars makes any gravitational influence they may have on us irrelevent. Unless these measurements are wrong...but you would need good reason to doubt either the observable data or the theoretical physics behind our interpretation. The inverse square law is fairly simple, with just high school algebra you can even work it out yourself if you know what the variables are.

Again, if you trust the physics our scientist have learned over the last century: No, we can't be inside the event horizon of a black hole. Black holes and the region around them are not euclidian. Which is another way of saying normal geometry (and Newtonian physics) do not work. Consider the following (but please get a second opinion from a "real" physicist as I'm just pulling it off the top of my head): Relativity tells us there is no such thing as an absolute frame of reference. Within an event horizon, however, you can not avoid the presence of the singularity.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Phil Urich]

It would be from the perspective of those inside, I would suppose, seeing as others wouldn't be able to see it anyways!

Re:Visible black holes?

[Phil Urich]

Quite a few ways, actually; redshifts, for one. Plus, the current indication that the universe is accelerating in its expansion would be an indication that, obviously, there aren't forces at work powerful enough to keep it from heading outwards indefinitely! Not entirely conclusive, I suppose, but the evidence just keeps mounting, the more you think about it . . . the idea that we're within a giant event horizon is oddly romantic, but really just wishful "that'd be kinda cool" thinking.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Mycroft_VIII]

Actually as I understand it (IanaCosmologist or simular) for a sufficiently large black hole it is indeed possible, I've heard it hypothesized that's exactly what the universe is.
However these supergiant reds are several orders of magnitude to small IIRC.
For what he suggested the central mass would likely be a few dozen times that of the milky way if not the local cluster.
If Stphen Hawkins is a /. reader I'm shure he could explain it better. Or come to think of it just about anyone studying this in college.

Mycroft

Re:Visible black holes?

[Anonymous Coward]

My memory is sketchy (dammit Jim, I'm a computer scientist, not an astrophysicist), but: there was a theory floating around a while back that the *universe* was actually inside a supermassive black hole (ie: we're inside one now, but we have no way of detecting this).

It would have been a neat solution to some of the problems that the big bang / big crunch theory raised (ie: where does the matter go inside a black hole - it spawns a bubble of space and a universe inside itself).

Re:Visible black holes?

[Glen Ponda]

no. The mass of the stars is big, but they are very far away.

Reminds me of a Fr. Ted sketch: [Holds up toy cow] This is small, but those [points to cows in field] are far away. Small, far away.

Re:Visible black holes?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

So, from the outside, it would take asymptotically long, as the closer it got to a singularity, the more time would dilate, right?

Re:Visible black holes?

[Phil Urich]

yeah, because the more curvature of space-time (ie. the more gravity) the more time dialates, so what seems to those close to the singularity to be a normal amount of time would be, from the view of those outside, to be an increasingly long amount of time. Once they're even all that close to the event horizon, and increasingly so as they go past it, though, it'd get quite hard to see much of anything from an outside point of view as to what's going on with those poor, doomed souls plummeting towards their now-inescapable end.

Re:Visible black holes?

[lgw]

Just in case anyone's still reading this ...

This is not, in fact, the case. Under ideal conditions, from the object's frame of reference, an object dropped directly into a black hole would fall in a seemingly Newtonian fashion straight into the singularity - sure thing.

In the real universe, anything falling into a black hole will have angular momentum, and would orbit the singularity, perhaps indefinitely. All orbits in the universe are a balance of gravity and angular momentum.

An even more true answer is "we don't know". A good mathmatical astrononercan tell you what theory predicts, but there's no possibility of gathering emperical evidence about what goes on insdie a black hole, so such theories deserve as much scepticism as theories about what happens after we die.

I'd like to announce the official...

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

..."Name Three Fat Women In Entertainment" thread right here. Skill points will be deducted for all mentions of Delta Burke, Oprah, and Anna Nicole Smith. You have thirty seconds from the time you read the headline and pounced on the "reply" button.

Go.

Re:I'd like to announce the official...

[gbulmash]

..."Name Three Fat Women In Entertainment" thread right here. Skill points will be deducted for all mentions of Delta Burke, Oprah, and Anna Nicole Smith. You have thirty seconds from the time you read the headline and pounced on the "reply" button.

All links go to photos...

Conchata Ferrell
Mo'Nique
Lori Beth Denberg

- Greg

Re:I'd like to announce the official...

[FuturePastNow]

Kirstie Alley, Camryn Manheim, and Aretha Franklin. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Re:I'd like to announce the official...

[MarkRose]

Camryn Manheim lost a bunch of weight. Sigh. She looked so good!

Re:I'd like to announce the official...

[FuturePastNow]

That's right, she had a gastric bypass, didn't she? No matter, there are plenty of fat celebs where she came from. I can think of at least two named Roseanne- Barr (or whatever it is now) and O'Donnell.

Re:I'd like to announce the official...

[eclectro]

Kirsty Alley Why oh why Kirsty? I can't believe I had impure thoughts for you in my youth.

Rosie ODonnell Somebody I'd want to steer clear of, unfortunately that means driving around the block. Maybe when they staple her stomach they can do the mouth too.

Margaret Cho. Good to know that Fatkins is working for her. Not funny, but yet the Cho goes on.

Scientists have confirmed it. These are three big fat stars.

Re:I'd like to announce the official...

[tdhillman]

I cannot believe that we are all so disgusting as to make a mockery of these women whose only crime is to be.....oh come on what am I saying....
Fat out winner. Darlene Cates. What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Sigh

[dolo666]

I feel really insignificant now. Not even a *large* electron do we live upon... it's really tiny!

Re:Sigh

[druske]

We don't live on an electron; it's a strange quark.

solar system?

[Ed Thomson]

And I thought the Sun was the only star in the solar system.

Re:solar system?

[mOoZik]

It is. The article (and summary) use the Solar System to put things into perspective. However, there exist other solar systems, as well, but they are not discussed in this article.

Re:solar system?

[InfiniteWisdom]

You're the strongest argument yet for adding a -1 numbskull mod to /.

My only wish

[nihilogos]

Is that at least one giant goes supernova in my lifetime. I don't think that's too much to ask

Re:My only wish

[sTalking_Goat]

You might be in luck. I hear the Vogons have got a contract for another Interstellar Overpass...

Re:My only wish

[daeg]

Dear nihilogos: We're sorry, but all intelligent designers are currently assisting other beings. Your request will be tended to in the the order that was receieved. The current wait time is: /pause/ 3 billion years. Please hold.

Re:My only wish

[NormalVisual]

Already happened, back in March of 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Southern Hemisphere. Sure, it was 100K light years away, but it's still pretty substantial.

Re:My only wish

[sydneyfong]

Not really, it probably "happened" about 100K years ago. ;-p

Re:My only wish

[BigFire]

I don't supposed Supernova 1987a don't count?

Re:My only wish

[lawpoop]

Well, even if it does happen, you won't know about it until 1 million years later.

Re:My only wish

[svvampy]

That'll just bring down the MPAA and their legion of lawyers around again and the suprnova will have to shut down.

Re:My only wish

[skyman8081]

I wasn't born until October of 1987, so I missed out on SN 1987a.

But there is always Eta Carinae to hope for.

Re:My only wish

[Anonymous Coward]

The offending super giant better be a good distance away. Otherwise the bone charing radiation bathing the solar system and nearby regions would be anything *but* funny for life forms like us.

Re:My only wish

[nihilogos]

I don't supposed Supernova 1987a don't count?

No. Must have a magnitude of at least -5. Or is that at most -5? Something like Supernova 1006 would be good.

Re:My only wish

[DigiShaman]

Add:

"This call is being monitored for quality assurance."

And so once again, God shall hear the bloody screams of billions of humans burning under its wrath.

Re:My only wish

[Mycroft_VIII]

Carefull what you wish, one a little to close give the whole planet a very bad sunburn.
Of course if it happens in our lifetime we won't have to deal with*, and hopefully those that do will get the dysonsphere's force shields up soon enough.

* Unless it's REALLY close, in witch case we still won't have to deal with, we won't even know it. just a bright flash and it's all over.

Mycroft

Re:My only wish

[Max Threshold]

But maybe it went supernova a zillion years ago, and the light from that event is almost here! You never know.

That's what sucks about the idea of interstellar exploration. The rest of the universe might already have blown up, and we wouldn't know it until we got there.

Re:My only wish

[OzRoy]

Stars go supernova all the time. I saw a documentary with one person who has made it his hobby to observe them and does it with just a normal telescope.

Aparently he became quite skilled at it and was finding quite a few each year.

The reason we don't see them is they are too far away

Re:My only wish

[Dusabre]

A supernova from a star like those would wipe out the region of space around it and create an immense black hole. Possibly wiping out alien civilizations and lifeforms in systems distant from it.

Re:My only wish

[utexaspunk]

if it does, you probably won't get to see it, unless you're planning on living a long, long time.

shouldn't you be wishing that one went supernova (your lifetime minus its distance in light years) years ago?

Re:My only wish

[rob_squared]

Given the fact that one goes off somewhere in the galaxy every 100 years or thereabouts, you just might get your wish.

Living to at least 100, and seeing it, are the hard parts.

Re:My only wish

[Yavi]

Well, if you're going to observe a supernova in your lifetime then the event would have already happened. I do not want to imagine the outcome of a supernova close enough to both occur and be observed in our lifetime.

Re:My only wish

[John Hasler]

> Well, if you're going to observe a supernova in
> your lifetime then the event would have already
> happened.

Depends on how one chooses to define simultaneity.

Re:My only wish

[aiabx]

This past year, supernovae SN2004ET and SN2004DJ wer both visible with an 8" telescope. Seeing a supernova is interesting, because you can be certain you are seeing with your own eyes something that no longer exists.
-aiabx

Solist!

[IcEMaN252]

Don't be so ethnocentric. There are such things as trinary systems.

Re:Solist!

[karmaflux]

I believe the word you're looking for is "heliocentric," and we fought the Catholic church long and hard to get that way. >:( I'm sick of you people oppressing us. Students of Copernicus unite!

Re:Solist!

[kaedemichi255]

Why's the parent modded funny? I don't see the humor. Plus it's a mis-use of the word ethnocentric. I guess the poster's intelligence could be +funny :P

Re:Solist!

[kaedemichi255]

Wow, an even more absurd justification for the misuse! Why'd u post as AC? Afraid that I'd call out your blantantly obvious "definition" taken out of context? What is "own group" referring to in the definition? That would be ethnicity, hence the "ethno" prefix in the word. I can't believe there are people as idiotic as you. If "ethnocentric" was really such an all-encompassing word, then why is it not used in all cases? So I can replace words like "anthropocentric" with "ethnocentric" and derive the same meaning? OMFG PLEASE GO GET AN EDUCATION!!!!!

Betelguese! Betelguese! Betelguese!

[Ralph Spoilsport]

they had a picture of Betelguese! there, but only the vaguest idea as to when it's supposed to blow.

Anyone heard ahything that way?

I've heard anything from tomorrow afternoon to 2 milion years. I've heard it's been getting increasingly variable since 1940.

If it goes supernova (and it's WAY big enough) what would be the results here? Genetic disorders? Extinction? Has anyone done the math on this?

RS

Re:Betelguese! Betelguese! Betelguese!

[jasontheking]

how do you pronounce "Betelguese"?

is it Beetle-Juice , or Betel-goo-eeze?

Re:Betelguese! Betelguese! Betelguese!

[turgid]

Yes, the Andromeda Galaxy is visible to the human eye,but he argues that it is not a single object but a collection of objects.

By that logic, niether is Betelgeuse. It's a collection of objects: atoms. The atoms are themselves collections of objects: neutrons, protons and electrons. The neutrons and protons are collections of quarks.

There's always some fool out there putting arbitrary limits on things, making artificial distinctions and generally talking nonsense.

Re:Betelguese! Betelguese! Betelguese!

[Dogtanian]

As far as I know, its Arabic origins favour the soft-'j' pronounciation.

Re:Betelguese! Betelguese! Betelguese!

[Moraelin]

Well, you can Google for more details, but the last time a star went supernova close enough, it caused the biggest mass extinction in history.

The short story goes like this: The pulse of gamma radiation completely wiped out the ozone layer, and replaced it by an opaque layer of nitrous oxide. That is, opaque but not to UV. So most living being on the surface _and_ in shallow water got deep fried by the Sun's UV. (UV goes a long way through water.) Additionally, that brown shell around the atmosphere caused a massive glaciation. ("Day After Tomorrow" style, except it lasted a million years, if I remember right.) The nitrous acid rain was also a nice bonus.

In fact, that's one theory as to why life in the Universe may in fact be very very rare, after all. Or Earth may in fact be an exception. Something like that happening near a planet can neatly wipe out a billion years of life evolution.

Whether Betelgeuse is close enough to do that to Earth, I wouldn't know. I'm not an astronomer.

Re:Betelguese! Betelguese! Betelguese!

[Betelgeuse]

You called?

3 Biggest Stars

[Anonymous Coward]

KW johnholmesitarii (9,800 light-years away), V354 ronjeremycephei (9,000 light-years away), and KY lexingtonsteelcygni (5,200 light-years away).

Re:3 Biggest Stars

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that someone actually modded this informative makes it that much more funny.

That must explain this, then...

[Anonymous Coward]

we're ripping up the neighborhood!

Non Red Giants

[bobobobo]

It would be interesting to find the largest non-red giant stars. As once our own sun turns into a red giant, it's radius is supposed to extend out past Jupiter as well.

Re:Non Red Giants

[mOoZik]

Actually, it will engulf the first three planets, but not extend to Jupiter.

Re:Non Red Giants

[helioquake]

Well, that may not be true, either, according to the article I read about a decade ago:

ApJ article (1993): Our Sun III

Oh gosh, I referenced ApJ in /. What have I done?

Re:Non Red Giants

[Feztaa]

Actually, it will engulf the first three planets

Pfffft, good riddance I say.

Re:Non Red Giants

[Cro Magnon]

Will we be safe if we move to Uranus?

Big planets...

[__aaclcg7560]

If you have a supersized star, would you have big planets? I think the largest extrasolar gas planet is four or five times larger than Jupiter.

Re: Big planets...

[Black Parrot]

> If you have a supersized star, would you have big planets?

No, you'd have charbroiled planets.

Re:Big planets...

[gardyloo]

I'm sure that someone who keeps up on the latest astronomical findings could give a better answer than I, but: No.

I doubt that there's much of a correlation between larger stars and larger planets orbiting them. The tricky thing about extrasolar astronomy is that we simply can't detect "normal" (i.e. non-gas-giant, although their prevalence might say that gas giants are actually normal, and rocky planets like the earth are maybe unusual) planets around other stars right now.
As far as I know, extrasolar planets are really only detected (or detectable, right now) in two ways: 1) find a star's wobble which can't be explained by visible objects. From the wobble and the mass of the star (extrapolated from its color, generally), calculate that there must be a planet of some size orbiting it. But to wobble a typical star takes a pretty big planet: an uber-Jupiter, especially if you want this wobble detectable from earth; 2) find that once in a while, several pixels on a CCD's image of the star get occluded by something transiting the star. Again, this takes something of considerable size.

There is a wikipedia article (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet with many more details, and disproving my guess that there are only two currently-used methods which have produced reasonably-confirmed planet detections -- pulsar timing methods have also seemed to work) which is relatively concise and nice.

Re:Big planets...

[ine8181]

I think the size of a star and the size of its planets are completely unrelated -- intuitively thinking, they should be random within certain parameters.

For example, binary stars are quite common, and there will be some binary star systems with relatively small stars -- that are only little larger than the star threshold mass.

If one of the stars were to be only a little smaller now so it sits below the star threshold mass, we end up with a relatively small star and an absolutely huge planet, that orbit each other.

Re:Big planets...

[geoffspear]

Of course, we're not very good at seeing extrasolar planets, so anything we "know" about them in general terms is pretty fuzzy.

It was amusing a couple of years ago to read a story about extrasolar planets that had been found, which mentioned that none of them would be suitable for sustaining life forms like those found on earth, implying that this somehow meant it was unlikely that the stars involved had planets that could sustain life. Of course they never mention that a scientist on a planet orbiting the nearest sun-like stars wouldn't be able to observe the earth, either.

Hmmm...

[spankey51]

Yo Mamma's so fat...

this just in

[Anonymous Coward]

The scientists credited with the discovery was seen singing "I like big stars and I cannot lie" the following day at a Mall by area man Jeff Willcot.

Willcot, who works as a plumber, said to journalists in a press conference "He things he's such a freaking bitshot now that he got all the press about the stars, but when his sink was clogged with hair - he calls me"

The scientist was unavailable for comment.

Re:this just in

[helioquake]

If I had a mod point, I'd give you "+1 insightful."

-IAAA (though I was trained to be a carpenter...)

Saturn too...

[tigersaw]

This puppy would actually eclipse Saturn, whose mean orbit is about 1.43 billion km.

...having diameters of more than 1.5 billion km...

[toocoolforschool]

*GASP*, Marlon Brando's back!

No worry -- the world will not end

[helioquake]

Don't worry about it. These giants are big, but not necessarily massive enough to go supernova at the end of their lives.

Besides, hypothetically, even if it were to explode like a supernova, it won't affect us much. Here is the number:

d = distance to the closest giant (5200light-yr)
E = total energy arising from supernova (1e51erg or something like that)

The energy receied at the Earth is

E / (4 *pi *d*d).

Now compare this number with the energy we receive every second from the Sun:

E_sun / (4 * pi * r*r)

where r is the distance between the Earth and the Sun (1.5e13 cm). You do the math, then the ratio of these two quantities comes out to be:

[E/(4*pi*d*d)] / [E_sun/(4*pi*r*r)] ~ 2.4

So all we get from this supernova is about 2 seconds worth of energy received from the Sun. And I'll tell you that the actual energy received from the supernova is much, much smaller.

Imagine a cluster of stars...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and the astronomers name it the Beowulf Cluster.

Re:Farther than the orbit of Jupiter

[mOoZik]

The blurb is copied directly from the BBC article, so send them a letter to inform of their grammatical inadequacy. :)

Poor use of language, 10 yard penalty.

[Detritus]

Largest?

Biggest?

Are we talking about diameter, magnitude or mass?

My guess, from reading the article, is diameter. I'd be interested in the highest mass stars, since there is an inverse relationship between mass and lifetime. What's the shortest time that a star can exist for?

Re:Poor use of language, 10 yard penalty.

[mOoZik]

Large means dimension. When was the last time you heard, "This star shines largely!" or "This star is weighs large" or something like that? Large, in this context, obviously means diameter.

Re:Poor use of language, 10 yard penalty.

[Detritus]

So when someone says they have a large amount of money, they are talking about the physical dimensions of their bank account?

Which is larger? 1 mole of O2 or 22.4 liters of O2? Note that I didn't specify the temperature and pressure.

Re:Poor use of language, 10 yard penalty.

[Detritus]

See What is the largest star?.

A real astronomer considers it to be an ambiguous question.

Re:Poor use of language, 10 yard penalty.

[rob_squared]

"What's the shortest time that a star can exist for?" Some theories say about a day, but that was a long time ago, in a galaxy very close by. http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/2 000/00-016.html

Re:Poor use of language, 10 yard penalty.

[geoswan]

Large means dimension. When was the last time you heard, "This star shines largely!" or "This star is weighs large" or something like that? Large, in this context, obviously means diameter.

I agree with you, by and large ...

You lack ambition...

[Kjella]

...my goal is to blow up one giant in my lifetime. Right after I finish this time machine, now where is that damn flux capacitator again...

Re:You lack ambition...

[JPelorat]

Much easier to do it with a Stargate.

Supernova frequency

[Raul654]

Astrophysicists used to think that a supernova occured once in the Milky Way (on average) every 100-300 years, but there was some work done in the early 90s that indicated it was more like once every 30 years or so.

Largest?

[marevan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't red giants dencity pretty low? So when a star transforms into a red giant, it's bound to get much larger. So wouldn't it be cooler to find actually non-dying star of this magnitude?

(Well definetly not cooler)

Re:Largest?

[RajivSLK]

So wouldn't it be cooler to find actually non-dying star of this magnitude?

What the hell? You act like the universe is your backyard sandbox. What's out there is what's out there. Sure it would be cool if we found a 3 foot tall leprichan that could shoot fireballs out of his ass running around on mars but it's just not going to happen buddy.

<retard>Wouldn't it be cooler though? </retard>

And for god sakes who modded him up?

Re:Largest?

[marevan]

And for god sakes who modded him up?

Propably the same guy who borrowed few synopses to you. I know "wouldn't it be cooler" is lame statement, but I don't speak english as my native tongue and so sometimes I'm forced to lame sentences that obviousy piss you off. But could you, by any chance, miss my point even more? Or be more sensitive to some statement in the web?

Or, as the lame sidenote: Did you just forgot to take the pill this morning?

Re:Largest?

[RajivSLK]

What point? That the universe doesn't amuse you as much as it should?

Re:Largest?

[AbRASiON]

Males rock :) - I love how we love "cool shit" big stuff etc.

Like the guiness book of records is always a cool read for a man :)
and tsunami's (i know bad topic) fascinating, .. huge animals (the blue planet dvd's) - so many fascinating things out there - big stuff is cool

On that topic, I know a girl who drives an 85 tonne mining truck - she's reached "ultra-cool" status :)

If they were located in the same place

[frovingslosh]

If they were located in the same place as our own Sun - at the centre of the Solar System - the stars would stretch out further than the orbit of Jupiter!"

Shows what little they know. If they were located in the same place as our own Sun, Jupiter would burn up and not have an orbit!

Re:If they were located in the same place

[spudchucker]

Since you seem to know so much, what would happen to our own sun if they were in the same place as our sun?

Re:If they were located in the same place

[mlk]

It would have a two week skiing holiday in France.

Re:If they were located in the same place

[IpalindromeI]

But how could it ski? It would melt all the snow:(

We must name one of them...

[dj245]

SO666, or perhaps Rosie O'Donnell for short

More info for the non-physics folk...

[TiggertheMad]

Several other posts have danced around the question a little bit, without answering it directly. It's a good question.

While these stars are big, filling a large volume of space, the article doesn't mention their mass. This is the ultimate determinant of what becomes a black hole and what doesn't.

Stars have gravity trying to pull everything into the center off it's mass. In physics pressure is basically equal to temapture, so as all the mass is squezed together, it heats up and begins nuclear fission. This creates a lot of heat, and the star's mass tries to expand. Gravity and pressure find a happy meidum and that is how the star ends up a particular size.

As the star burns it's fuel, it has to get hotter or it will stop 'burning', due to the way nuclear fusion works. Eventually it will burn up its fuel and prssure will not balance gravity, and the whole star will collapse. If it is really heavy, say several times the mass of the sun, it will probably collapse into a black hole. If it is slightly heavier than our sun, it might end up as a very dense neutron star. Otherwise, it will end up as a white dwarf, a small star that is somewhat like a ember left over after a campfire. If a star is really massive it can also explode in a supernova to lose some weight and avoid becomming a black whole.

As I mentioned, the article doesn't say what the mass of the star is, but it's probably a safe bet that is above the black hole limit. When it finishes burining its fuel, it will likely go supernova and/or become a black hole.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[MarkRose]

For a more informative discussion of the life cycle of a star, see this article or this article. There are others, too. Just google for star life cycle.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[Anonymous Coward]

This may set a record for most mispelled words in one post! Would you like a job as an editor?

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[Kugelfang]

You're wrong in two points:
a) Turning into a black hole is determined by
mass/radius ratio. You could even turn out sun
into a black hole by "somehow" ( :-) ) pushing
its radius below the Schwarzschild radius.
b) "it heats up and begins nuclear fission."
-> You mean "fusion", as fusion needs heated-up
gas (plasma) to start. Fission is what happens
in nuclear power plants ;-)

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[master_p]

Good post! we need more posts like that to explain science in laymans terms.

Here is another question: let's say that we have a star that is 50% hollow at its center, i.e. there is an empty sphere around its center with its radius being at 50% of the radius of the star.

Would the star still collapse towards its center?

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[Himring]

In physics pressure is basically equal to temapture, so as all the mass is squezed together, . . . Gravity and pressure find a happy meidum.

Astrophysics and deplorable spelling.... fzzz, pop, there went my brain....

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[JDevers]

What you describe it impossible under known physical laws. If something along those lines DID happen (somehow...) it would definitely collapse towards the center and reform as a much smaller star. However, something like that can't naturally come about. Think of the analogy (which is actually far more possible, given the densities involved) what would happen to a given region of ocean if half a mile under the ocean there was vacuum for 500 foot. Obviously, the water would fall in to fill the vacuum.

I see what you are getting at, which way is the gravity really pulling if there is that much distance across the middle, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. Even if you had numerous "mini-stars" form from the original stellar matter, those would also be pulled towards the center of the system of gravity. The only way to prevent the eventual reunion of all the stellar matter at the center of the "original" star would be removal of matter from only one side, then you nudge the center of gravity to the other side as you remove mass, but it would all still be pulled into one mass at the center eventually.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[DeusExLibris]

Excellent post!

A couple of clarifications and references to excellent books on black holes:

First, not all stars reach equilibrium. Cepheid variables oscillate between small and dense states and large and diffuse states. This happens because the star cannot reach a steady state balance between pressure and temperature.

Second, it is interesting to note that sun like stars below the Chandrasekhar limit (about 1.4 solar masses) will turn into white dwarfs. The pressure in these stellar remnants is provided not by heat from fusion, but from electron degeneracy pressure (as another poster pointed out). Neutron stars (1.4-3 solar masses) are supported by neutron degeneracy pressure. Beyond this (>3 solar masses) there is no force that can keep the star from collapsing on itself, leading to a black hole.


Two excellent books on black holes are:

Black Holes by J-P Luminet
Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[master_p]

Thanks for the reply. I know it is impossible...it was just a thought experiment for understanding gravity.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[JDevers]

You're welcome...I figured you knew, but I wanted to cut off the "yes it is, no it's not..." argument before it started ;)

A similiar situation, but one which is easier to understand is the formation of a solar system without a center mass. This is another impossible situation, but easier to put the brain around... An accretion disk would form and then locallized masses would form their own minisystems and turn into planets and still head "inward" even without a sun. There would never be much spin to a system like that and it would still take a LONG time to fall inward, but given enough time and a perfectly isolated system, it would happen.

Another demonstration that actually DOES happen is in a binary star system. The stars don't rotate around each other, they rotate around a center of gravity between them and again are destined for one final kiss assuming an isolated system.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[TiggertheMad]

Hmmm, lets, see...non-insightful reply, criticizing and not really even witty or ammusing...what is the correct reply?

Oh, yeah, Fuck off, you whining bitch. You are a waste of perfectly good carbon.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[TiggertheMad]

Hehehehe, your are correct on the second point, I was in a rush, and typed fission when I meant fusion. However, your first point isn't quite correct. (a correction to the correction, whee!)

A black hole is a mass that has been compacted beyond it's Schwarzschild radius. This value is an expression of mass to radius. However, a star will become a black whole based off of it's mass alone. Sufficient mass is needed to cause gravatational collapse. Once that starts to occur, and it crosses the limiting radius, it will then be a black hole, event horizon and all. Mass alone gets it there.

Here is an interesting thought: You speak of the energy needed to 'push' the sun's radius accross the critical radius. I would speculate that this energy would be about .4 solar masses worth of energy as converted using E=MC^2. (1 solar mass of 'mass' + .4 solar masses of energy pressing inward ~= limit of what has to eventually become a black hole) I didn't break out the slide ruler to check the math, but it makes sense. Of course, stellar evolution is complicated, and you might just end up with a Type II supernova that destroys the solar system...

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[Himring]

Made ya reply....

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[TiggertheMad]

Ok, now that was much better, it was a witty retort.

...but you are still a wase of carbon.

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[Himring]

made ya misspell "waste...."

Re:More info for the non-physics folk...

[TiggertheMad]

HA! That wasn't a misspelling, it was a TYPO!

Not km, miles.

[Slartibartfast]

Not the guy who forwarded it to Slashdot's fault; the BBC got it wrong. According to the Lowell Observatory's site, it's 7 au in radius, or about 1.3 billion MILES. That's B-I-G.

And dang, you'd expect the BBC to keep their units right.

Re:Not km, miles.

[Doorjam]

The article says 1.5 billion km, while the graphic in the article identifies it as 1.3 billion miles.

For Americans:

[tpgp]

thats 932 056 788 miles

Re:For Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

Or 8.81419673 × 10^11 smoots.

Re:For Americans:

[Teun]

Maybe, but in space exploration the comparison is in Volkswagen Beetles...

Force of gravity on the star..

[Screamer49]

say bout... 2Gs?

Catch .22

[Keslyle]

You know, I really used to idolize the space program. Typical little boy, big dreams of flashy job. It was more than that, it was the flying too, something I enjoy even today. And admittedly there has been a lot of good come from the space program (albeit for the wrong reasons) and more than likely a fair share of nasty things came from that research that the government never bothered to tell us about. To be perfectly honest, though, I can't really think of any new or important advancements that have come out of the space program lately. Never have I been a proponent of ignorance, but I really gotta ask, who really cares? I'm sure that we're making marvelous and wonderful new telescopes, but we're using the same shuttles now that we were 20 years ago, and we're not even sure those are really safe anymore. There hasn't been any benefits to pertinent sciences, and the images we're getting from telescopes aren't producing much more than pretty pictures and more unproven theories. I'm not sleeping any better knowing that the biggest star we've found so far is bigger than half our solar system, or I'd never have time to read slashdot. It's sad when I would feel the urge to take the axe to one of my childhood dreams, but I think the space program in general has simply outgrown it's usefulness. America keeps funelling money into it but nothing's really coming out, at least not that we know of. If they could put half the effort and ingenuity that has gone into the space program to say...medical research, cleaner energy sources, environmental repair, agriculture, housing, any number of other areas, or (egad) the national debt, I think we would be utilizing those resources in a much wiser fashion. Don't even try to bring up the possibility of colonizing Mars. I myself have even thought of ways to try to make it feasible but there are some problems with it. 1. To say that it is a 'long term possibility' would at the least say that it's not anything that any of us are going to see. Probably not our grandkids. 2. Because of point 1, we're probably going to destroy ourselves long before that. 3. Even if it is, and we can't cut it on this planet, what gives us the right to destroy a another one? 4. Every scifi I've ever seen where we colonized Mars, it breaks away and we have a horrible civil war that in most cases we never reconcile from. I know that this may seem like a stretch but knowing our history may keep us from being damned to repeat it, my study of it shows that we're still pretty likely to repeat it. Besides, the difference between Scifi and fanasy is that scifi is possible. Enough people have thought about it, maybe the authors are right.

Re:Catch .22

[qualico]

Reads like we are living in the past.

What happens when we turn on that quantum walkie talkie?
Will the future tell us what change it needs in the past?

Terra forming Mars would be a breeze if we could steer comets into its path.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01 /0 2/1820218&from=rss

Re:Catch .22

[servognome]

Just because the discovery of giant stars gets all the press coverage, doesn't mean NASA isn't involved in fundamental science and research that may be applicable to the real world.
NASA provides a yearly list of spinoff products Also NASA doesn't have to create a new product that everybody buys to be useful. Better understanding of materials, new measurement techniques, or even new ways to model systems, all have practical benifits. The average person on the street may not care, but design or manufacturing companies could be interested.
You can browse the Technical Reports Archive and find alot of engineering research on things from Water Treatment to Evaluating manufacturing and assembly errors on rotating machinery

Re:Catch .22

[j_cavera]

There's only one real reason worth mentioning. Yes, we have learned a lot from space research. Everything from turbomachinery to medical-grade polymers owes a debt to NASA and the basic research that they perform. But as for the space part... it is a near-certainty (statistically speaking) that someday something huge (> 10km accross) will try to smack into the earth. It could be next month, or next year or not for 1000 years - we don't really know. When it happens, we better know how to detect it, move it, blow it up or whatever because right now we really have no clue. And there is no Bruce Willis with a band of drillers, a nuke and a couple of military space shuttles.

Re:Catch .22

[aiabx]

You know, a hundred years ago, no one had a clue that the earth was in danger of a catastrophic collision with an asteroid or a comet. All that knowledge came as an unintended, unimagined side effect of pure, impractical scientific research. If that knowledge helps us to avoid a collision and extinction, then we've gained a practical benefit greater than buying a space telescope for every man, woman and child on earth. So you're having a good laugh sneering at the practical benefit of finding large stars. How do you know that the knowledge we are gaining about life and death cycles of stars won't be crtitically important in another hundred years? Or that we might accidently discover something even more important than the possibility of asteroid collision? The answer is you don't, and if we have to justify pure science in terms of Tang and Teflon delivered, you won't.
-aiabx

Re:Catch .22

[Keslyle]

Well, yes and no. I agree that there really is no telling when the next "big breakthrough" will come about, but the same can be said of any field. But my question is this: When was the last "big breakthrough" in the space field vs. other scientific areas. Now granted, given the enormity of its scope, I wouldn't necessarily hold that program to same timeline. On the other hand, with so many fields encompassed in it you would think it would be more probable for one of them to come up with something. But aside from that, it really just comes down to using resources wisely. As is, the cost is outweighing the benefits by a lot. You both bring up valid points that I'll admit I hadn't really considered. Yes, it is possible that some earth-shattering kaboom may be discovered to be coming our way in the future (Armageddon, anyone?) but it isn't doing so right now. Well, if it's coming it is coming and has been for the past 2 billion years but that's not my point. The space program is a massive undertaking in budget, manpower, equipment, and space. That is why the only other country to have one has been Russia. Even then, many great things were done, but done for the wrong reason(s). With Russia gone, and no new direct competition to pace itself again. I think NASA lost some of its direction. So what I propose is a slow scale-back of NASA. Take the areas of research and development that have the highest probability of producing beneficial results in the near future, and make those the core of the program (assuming they aren't already but god I would hope they are). Next take a look at some of the more outlandish projects, those with low yields or extremely long-term projections for success. Preferably some of the military-type projects (like we need anymore weapons) but I doubt that would ever happen. Start phasing some of these projects out and re-allocating the resources to other projects or back to the general fund for use elsewhere. In this manner, we can slowly scale back unnecessary programs and appropriate those resources to areas that can need it most. It will also stop a huge influx of unemployed workers flooding the job market all at once. I'm sure that we will come across problems that only NASA or some equivalent can solve, but I believe those problems to be some time away. There are enough problems on the planet that have been ignored and allowed to spiral out of control that I think should take precedence before we start looking out there for more. If we stop for a moment to fix the problems of today, we will be that much more capable of addressing the problems of tomorrow.

Artists Rendition

[bruthasj]

When will the artists rendition competition begin for what it looks like on the surface? Should be able to see Saturn on the horizon, since it only goes out to Jupiter's orbit.

Nah, it's a lot less than that

[Raul654]

Remember, we're limiting the question only to the milky way. The Milky Way galaxy is basically a sphere (diameter of 50,000? light years) surrounded by a disc with diameter of 100,000 light years. The earth is about 1/2 of the distance from the outer edge to the core. That means that the most distant part (from earth) is the other edge of the disc. This means it would take you 3/4 * 100,000 = 75,000 years to see the most distant suprnovas.

Re:Nah, it's a lot less than that

[lawpoop]

Yes, 75,000 years to see it after you've died.

Wrong Units

[willpall]

"1.5 billion km across" means nothing to me. How many Libraries of Congress could the star hold?

Re:Wrong Units

[Rinikusu]

Wrong comparison. How many volkswagons? would be much more appropriate.

Re:Wrong Units

[danila]

Are you stupid or what? Everyone knows that objects in space are measured using Texas as a unit. As in "asteroid the size of Texas". These stars are about a teraTexas in size.

Re:Wrong Units

[Peldor]

None. LoCs can't withstand that kind of temperature.

Re:Wrong Units

[archen]

As any college student writing a term paper knows, it depends on how big the font is (for the library of congress).

Re:Wrong Units

[Junior J. Junior III]

A billion trillion metric fuckloads.

Re:Wrong Units

[thechao]

Hrm. The Madison Building is 7 stories (including the basement) and 2.1 million square feet; or 300,000 square feet and ~80 feet tall (assuming 10 foot rooms with space between floors), or about 24,000,000 cubic feet. 1.5 billion kilometers ~ 1 million miles or 5280 million feet. The volume of a sphere that size is about 625 000 000 000 million million million cubic feet, throw in 20% change for 4/3*Pi and the loss of the .280 portion of the cube and we get ~750 000 000 000 million million million cubic feet. Divide by 24 000 000 cubic feet and we get ~ 30 000 million million million, or 30 sextillion LoCs[Madison].

Re:Wrong Units

[Finuvir]

"1.5 billion km across" means nothing to me. How many Libraries of Congress could the star hold?

All of them.

Re:Yes!

[qualico]

How do you mean?
As in, she has pulsated, but outside the hydrostatic equilibrium :-?

earth

[Fuzzums]

imagine earth that size.
plenty resources, more than enough land, so no reason to fight over that and the internet spanning earth would be BIGGGGGG

Re:earth

[elli2358]

and the BIGGGGGG planet would have BIGGGGG gravity which would quickly transform you into BIGGGGG (but thin) pool of semi-liquified tissue and other organic components.

Re:earth

[Blastrogath]

Don't worry, even with more than enough land we can still fight over who gets the best land.

Re:earth

[edinho]

$ ping -c 1 my.porn.server.com
PING my.porn.server.com (11.22.33.44.55.66) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from my.porn.server.com (11.22.33.44.55.66): icmp_seq=1 ttl=5400 time=2653000.2 ms

Re:earth

[Jaysyn]

Well if Terra was that massive & could still support life, said life would have evolved to compensate for the extreme gravity.

Jaysyn

Re:earth

[Italianjon]

Earth, that size... Think of the Air Miles to visit your relatives on the other side... Actually how long would that take to fly!

Re:earth

[PigleT]

Good excuse for ipv6.

Of course, it wouldn't be the earth if you didn't scale up this poncy infestation of humans to match. That's one helluva lot of Dubya-voters to worry about...

Re:earth

[rob_squared]

It's all fun and games until you get crushed to the consistency of toothpaste. Strangely, flying would be easier. According to a discovery channel special about evolution on other planets.

Re:earth

[Fuzzums]

ipv64 ;)

ohwell. the dubya-voters are only 2% of the world population.

I know it's a bad pun but...

[elli2358]

red giants tend to burn at lower temperatures because they have scant usable fuel left, so it would technically be cooler to find one of these guys than a younger star with the same radius.

Re:just wondering about Green Stars.

[qualico]

When I was soldering my leads to the stereo using a propane torch, the copper turned the flame green.
Want a nice color change in the hearth?
Put a copper tube drilled with holes and stuffed with rubber hose into the fire.

I imagine there might be conditions similar in not so common sequences of stars; perhaps containing the right recipe of elements?

No doubt some stellar race has already toyed with the idea. :->

So maybe there would be purple plants under a Green Star?

Thanks for the tip!

[po8]

If they were located in the same place as our own Sun - at the centre of the Solar System...

So that's where I left it!

NRG

[dooby_Monster]

Now that's what i call energy. It's a pity we couldn't utilise it.

Re:NRG

[reifchen]

But they'd make good pockets for playing galactic snooker, assuming you had a few thousand years to burn.

Re:Farther than the orbit of Jupiter

[ine8181]

I'm sorry to post completely off-topic, but just to answer the comment, an excerpt from Chambers dictionary;

• Use either farther or further when there is an actual physical distance involved I can't walk any farther / further.
• Use further when the meaning is 'additional' or 'beyond this point' I would like to make one further point.

Yotta Years...Smoke and Mirrors?

[qualico]

Its all just smoke and mirrors.

I'm sure there may not be many anomalies between us and 9800ly, however, it would be smart to keep an open mind about the possibility.

Sounds like they are making some progress ;
"With close stars, scientists can calculate stellar sizes from their temperatures and luminosities."

So does this formula not work for distances beyond say 1,000,000ly?
Where is the transition and why?

01/14/04 Blog 4: -- You Are Here -- SpaceCanada.org

it's largest in dimensions

[jesterzog]

The article appears to be speaking about diameter.

If you're keen to find out about stars with the largest mass, you could start with Eta Carinae. It's extremely massive and unstable, and came to everyone's attention when it was noticed to be rapidly fluctuating in brightness over the past hundred or so years. It's also close enough that there's arguably a theoretical possibility that we could be in danger if it decides to go any time soon, although it's probably not worth worrying about. Not from any explosion, of course, but if it were to fire gamma rays in our direction then we might have problems, for instance.

I'm not sure what the word is now, but at one point in recent history the mass of Eta Carinae had been empirically measured to be more than what had been considered theoretically possible. In any case, it's very close to the boundary of the most massive that a star could possibly be without collapsing in some way.

As a somehow related side note, eta-carinae also happens to be what I decided to name my Dell Inspiron when I set it up a few months ago.

Re:it's largest in dimensions

[Detritus]

Thank you, that is a truly bizarre star.

What happens when it dies

[adeydas]

"Red supergiants are massive stars nearing the ends of their lifetimes. They are comparatively cool, luminous and very large." So when they use up their fuel, won't its own gravity cause it to collapse creating a black hole?!

Re:What happens when it dies

[tobibobi]

I believe its that or a supernova.

Re:What happens when it dies

[KD5YPT]

Yes it will, but there are a few events it will go through.

Generally, star dies in 3 ways with 3 end results.

When our sun dies, it just cool and become a white dwarf with a short period with a planetary nebula.

If a star is more then ten times the size of our sun, it supernova, and collapses into a neutron star. Sometimes a black hole.

However, if a star is TRULY massive. It hypernova (an even more violent version of supernova) that is guaranteed to form a large black hole.

Star Jones!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to submit Star Jones. She's HUGE! Sorry, got a big caught up in the excitement.

Re:Farther than the orbit of Jupiter

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Bollocks. "Farther" is a specific variant of "further". It can be used instead of further in distance comparisons but doesn't have to be.

Re:1.5 billion km

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Yup, in the same way as a tonne and a half is 1.5 megagrams and 1.667 minutes is a hectosecond.

UOM: The Orbit of Jupiter

[zero_offset]

I hereby declare that "the orbit of Jupiter," much like the popular trend of referencing an arbitrary number of Volkswagons as a benchmark for indicating "pretty heavy", is becoming a new unit of measure indicating "pretty far away".

You heard it here first.

As far as I know.

Re:UOM: The Orbit of Jupiter

[man_ls]

If you ripped all the pages out of every book in the Library of Congress, how many would you have to place end-to-end to reach an orbit of Jupiter?

Re:UOM: The Orbit of Jupiter

[zero_offset]

I'd estimate about six-hundred Standard Volkswagon-loads.

Not round?

[danila]

According to the image in the article, these starts are so heavy that they are flattened by their weight. Or are they rotating so fast that they are stretched? Seriously, I have no idea why the artist decided to draw the stars as ellipses as opposed to circles. Does anyone have any idea?

Water based

[MRKisThatKid]

KY Cyg could do with some KY Jelly to avoid ring burn.

Re:1.5 billion km

[jacksonj04]

How many libraries of congress laid end to end though?

don't visit your relatives on the other side.

[Fuzzums]

distance jupiter-sun: 778.300.000

distance other side sphere: PI * r
3.14 * 778.300.000 = 2.476.517.488 km

speed concorde: about mach2 = about 2.000 Km/h
2.476.517.488 / 2.000 = 1238258 hours
1238258 / 24 = 51594 days
51594 / 365 = 141 years

hmmmmmmm.

Re:don't visit your relatives on the other side.

[Italianjon]

Thanks Fuzzums... insightful... Do not forget to leave about 50 years before your relatives are born...

past tense?

[Lord Ender]

For talking about stars that are so far away, shouldn't we be talking about what they were like, as opposed to what they are like today (since we can't know that?)

I'm just waiting for someone to say,

[Junior J. Junior III]

"I was born in 1988 you insensitive clod!!!"

Stating the obvious:

[cylcyl]

Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras

Re:just wondering about Green Stars.

[IpalindromeI]

What about fumes from the melting/burning rubber?

Not very dense

[hpa]

Red supergiants may be large, but their density have been described by e.g. Larry Niven as "red-hot vacuum." At least their outer layers are very tenuous at best. Given that the masses are typically only a few orders of magnitude more than the Sun, at most, but that their volumes are enormously much bigger, there can't be that

This means (surface) gravity is low and they can get by with less hydrostatic pressure to maintain their bulk.

The *core* is typically very dense, much denser than the Sun. Higher pressures are needed to support fusion of higher-order elements. Makes the surface layers even less dense, since a lot of the mass is still in the core.

I thought...

[Tenebrious1]

If they were located in the same place as our own Sun - at the centre of the Solar System - the stars would stretch out further than the orbit of Jupiter!

Wait a minute... the Earth's not the center of the Solar System???

Re:I thought...

[ScislaC]

of course not... it's the center of the Universe. Unless my information is out of date that is...

Re:I thought...

[MonkeyCookie]

Damn that Aristotle! He lied!

No !

[Professeur Shadoko]

The right unit is: (pick one)
1/Furlongs
2/Light-Fortnight

Re:just wondering about Green Stars.

[seanadams.com]

What about fumes from the melting/burning rubber?

That's what makes you see the colors - duh!

Oprah's collapse

[lildogie]

Q: After Oprah's stellar expansion and contraction, what kind of star is left?

A: A brown dwarf.

Too bad it's not a planet...

[Darkn3ss]

with plenty of resources, I bet they would have a ton of oil, gold, etc. for mining and shipping back to Earth. Of course we'd need some sort of teleportation device to do so cost effectively, but you get my drift.

1.5 billion km?!?!

[arfonrg]

Man, those metric users just refuse to use the correct units for a given application... USE LIGHT YEARS!

You might as well have said: "over 700 million miles"

Kilometers!? Indeed!

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[Cervantes]

If they were located in the same place as our own Sun - at the centre of the Solar System...

Where the hell else would they be??? Orbiting a planet?

Is the Beeb going back to believing that suns orbit planets? What's next, the Flat Earth Society, or the "The Moon is a CIA Spy Balloon" theory?

What worries me more is that there are people who read that and thought "Oh, so THAT'S where the sun is!"

Re:No worry -- the world will not end

[helioquake]

Supernovae are quite faint in X-rays (until their blast waves hit circum/inter-stellar material).

Not all of the energy emerge in the form of light, either.

If they were at the center of our solar system

[ballsanya]

it would finally be a nice day out by Uranis...hehe

Re:No worry -- the world will not end

[Idarubicin]

The energy of one keypress in X-rays is enough to kill you.

That's very borderline true....

Keys on a keyboard draw maybe a watt when in use. At most. Assuming a keystroke takes about a tenth of a second, you're sucking down 0.1 joules per keystroke.

Delivered to your entire body, that's about 2 milligray (0.2 rad) of absorbed dose. A fatal dose is upwards of 5 gray (500 rad).

To be fair, if you instantaneously delivered that dose to a small volume--10 mL, or a third of an ounce--then you'd hit that with 10 gray and kill most of it. (Assuming it was a reasonably sensitive spot.) If you delivered it right to the spinal cord in the neck, you might be able to kill someone. Frankly, that amount of energy, delivered just about anywhere, might annoy someone--but it won't kill them.

What about Uranus?

[objekt]

Will one ever stretch further than Uranus?

No goatse pics, please

Re:just wondering about Green Stars.

[qualico]

Some chemical reaction takes place where you don't really smell any burning rubber.
Its consumed.

Can't find them in Celestia

[sveni]

I just started Celestia to visit them, but I can't find them.
According to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4164365. stm
they are called
KW Sagitarii
V354 Cephei
KY Cygni
but they are not in the celestia catalog.
But the catalog uses at least two different naming conventions for stars, so I'm (or the webpage, or celestia) probably using the wrong names.

Can anybody help me?

Greetings
Sven

So...

[IcEMaN252]

Play beer! Please tell me that some other people on /. watch sports and have seen those commercials. Please.