Slashdot Mirror
Stars Have a Weight Limit
Mike writes "Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made the first direct measurement within our Milky Way Galaxy, and concluded stars cannot get any larger than about 150 times the mass of our sun. The astronomers used the Hubble to probe the Arches cluster, the densest in our galaxy. This finding takes astronomers closer to understanding the complex star formation process. It also gives the strongest backing yet to the notion stars have a weight limit."
mass and weight- not the same thing.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
http://www.starjones.com/
They named it CowboyNeil. The reasoning behind the name was because it actually orbits around CowboyNeil, along with several small galaxies.
Clearly Kirstie Alley is proving this false.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
concluded stars cannot get any larger than about 150 times the mass of our sun.
Else they have to pay for two seats.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
"Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope...
Yeah, in the very near future, they'll say "wow, if only we had an orbiting telescope..."
Back to the stone-ages for us!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I think Anna Nichole smith has proved that one wrong. she hasn't lost weight, mearly collapsed in on herself
I am an engineer, I blame technology for my mistakes almost as much as I blame stupid people. -1190
There is a big 'star' in the middle of the Milky Way that has a mass of a few million suns. Who says the stray pair of hydrogen atoms near the event horizon don't fuse into helium once in a while.
Because if you go from star to not-star, you gain weight. If you want to be a star again, you better lose the weight. So stars must have a weight limit.
I've said this on other forums but...
That 150 solar mass limit is not a hard limit. There will be some statistical probability to find a star greater than 150 solar mass. Figer's finding indicates that he could not find a star any more massive than 130 solar mass (in the Archer cluster? is that the pistol star again?).
This will be an observational constraint for stellar model parameter. Any future stellar evolution theory has to take into account that there are very few number of stars that have a mass greater than 130 solar mass, and none above 150 solar.
[Hey, some stellar evolution scientists would tell you today that there can't be a star any more massive than 80 solar mass! This topic is still debated for its accuracy. So take it with a grain of salt.]
It does NOT say that stars over 150 solar masses can't exist, only that the cluster is missing them. So, if the Anonymous Coward who walked off with them would own up, everything would be ok.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Unfortunately, this is not a troll; this is true. It is a shame that we are going to lose something that has been so valuable to us when NASA decomissions it soon, despite that some say that ground based telescopes are good enough now. Good bye, Hubble.
Regarding the cluster that was studied:
"It resides 25,000 light-years away from Earth in our galaxy's hub"
Ahhh, it's an unswitched star topology network.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Wouldn't any accumulation of mass about that size that's not a star be a black hole?
And the larger the star the shorter it's life span, so if a star gathers too much mass in it's forming stages will it just become a black hole beforehand or lose weight and then begins it's short life span normally?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Wow, how did this get modded as a troll? Are there mods out there that wish for the demise of Hubble or something? This is a very real thing that's happening and it's going to be a tragic loss.
I rank the success of Hubble right up there with Apollo in terms of NASA's crowning moments.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
It will cost just as much to repair the Hubble as it would to put something else more compact and powerful out there, so troll or not, Hubble needs to make way for leaner and more powerful machinery.
Scientist's opinion on how stars are formed are just that - opinions. We'll be changing all the textbooks to include the "intelligent design" theory of star formation. There is really no need to waste money on further research.
"greater", not "larger".
stars cannot be any [something] sum greater than 150 times the same [something] sum of our sun.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Never trust a reader to correctly interpret a story posted on /. that is a misunderstood link to a pop science report about a paper published by a scientist. I think the scientists themselves are doing fine without the /. commentary on how they could do their job better.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
stars have no weight limit. [insert fat celebrity name here] has provern that.
What exactly do they consider direct versus indirect? I'm thinking that there are differing degrees of indirect measurement. From putting it on a scale, to measuring orbits of nearby objects, to red-shifts of light passing nearby.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I'm still waiting for "-1, Wrong" to make the list of mod tags.
A better read than the ./ article reference is an article at hubble site.
The OP says "Mike writes, 'blah blah'", which doesn't provide proper attribution. The "blah blah" part then goes on to be a verbatim copy of the second through fifth sentences of the linked article.
/. eds slept through the part of high school where they teach you about plagiarism (this "Mike" guy evidently did).
Makes me wonder of the
It will cost just as much to repair the Hubble as it would to put something else more compact and powerful out there, so troll or not, Hubble needs to make way for leaner and more powerful machinery.
I wouldn't mind Hubble dying if there were a replacement for it, but there isn't one. JWST isn't going to be active until 2011, and it is infrared-only.
TTFN
You mean to tell me that these monstrosities weigh under 150 Sol masses???
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
The article you link to could have been a bit more clear, but if you read carefully, notice that "large" is not referring to the mass of the star, but to its radius.
A star only 15 times the mass of the sun can go through the red supergiant phase near the end of its life. However, this time is short in relation to the lifetime of the star. Finding the largest ones in the sky right now is more of a matter of catching a star at the right time rather than just of how massive it actually is.
I really want a "-1, Boring". Or at least, "-1, Incoherant" for those who can't spell, punctuate or use paragraphs.
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
A white dwarf is the remnant from a low to mid-mass star (less than about 10 solar masses). White dwarves do not go supernova unless they have a very close binary companion that begins to dump mass onto its surface.
As a side note, white dwarf+companion supernova have characterstics in their spectra that are different from those of a single massive star collapse. As a result, they are distinguished by the labels Type Ia (for the WD binary SN) and Type II (for most single massive star SN), Ib, and Ic (for oddball stars that have been modified before the SN occurs). The labels are a bit strange because SN were classified by spectra before the explanation for the difference in their spectra existed.
Finally, although I'm not an expert in massive star formation, I think the 120-150 solar mass limit is not from a fast-burning argument, but from an argument that arises from looking at how such a massive system evolves dynamically in the early part of its life. Most massive stars have significant "winds" that slowly shed material from their envelops right from the start. It may be that such a process in stars with a chance to get larger end up disrupting the accretion process too fast.
We do have spitzer now. Though I'm not sure of the dis/adv. of infrared compared to visual. http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/
I think the scientists themselves are doing fine without the /. commentary on how they could do their job better.
Well, apparently the nature article, wich I haven't read, and I don't have the intention of reading in the near future, doesn't claim it's impossible. So I'm cool.
Tell the editors to stop putting that nonsense in their headlines instead of telling me to stop complaining about it, dude.
You can't take the sky from me...
Immovable objects 'n' all that...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Most of hubble's best photos were taken in infrared IIRC. Its called red shift.
Personally I think almost all the tags but funny and insightfull/interesting and informative should be eliminated.
Actually, I'd prefer that the negative mod options still be available, but that they require 2 mod points rather than 1 mod point. As it is right now, you have an awful lot of people simply modding down comments that they disagree with, even if the comment itself is interesting or insightful. If mod-downs cost twice as much, negative mods might not be quite as spontaneous, but obviously bad/trolling comments would still get modded down.
Basically, in the current system a provoking (but still interesting) comment is bound to get modded way down if a simple majority disagrees with it. If mod-downs cost twice as much, you'd need at least twice as many people disagreeing as agreeing.
So show your support for the Hubble Origins Probe, which would cost less than a repair and image 20 times as fast.
You mean "-1, Incoherent", right?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's a cross between Incoherent and Rant. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
We have other space telescopes. How do you think they feel with all this attention being placed on Hubble? All spacecraft have a limited lifespan. The cost/benefit analysis must be done for each once they are past their EOL. The numbers just aren't there for Hubble. $2 billion is just to much to fix one out of many science satellites. Hubble has been way too expensive from the start. It was over budget before it even launched. Then it was useless until the shuttle could fly up and the astronauts could make an optical correction. The whole idea of repairing spacecraft in orbit is just ridiculous when comparing to the cost of launching another spacecraft. Hubble needs to be REPLACED. Not repaired. Check out the NGST. They should accelerate this program and get it up there.
No, it will be able to take images of visible light, but yes, it is mainly an infrared telescope. But this is a good thing, because of the red shift due to the doppler effect.
JWST will also be parked at L2 with a large sun shield, so it should have some good data.
The stars have few fundamental parameters:
- the surface temperarure
- the accerlation
- and the absolute magnitude
These parameters depend on
- the mass, radius, density, consistance and the rotation speed
There are alot of unanswered questions but I think we have been surprised many times in the past
First we should understand the basics, like the process of the birth of a star, then we can talk about the "limits"...
Of course, except that NGST - wait, I assume you're referring to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and not Northrop Grumman Space Technology (NGST), which is building JWST - is going to be observing in a different wavelength regime. Granted, this is what was called for in the Decadal Survey, and yes, a large, IR-optimized telescope will undoubtedly make fascinating new discoveries, but it will not be a replacement for Hubble. The only thing seriously on the drawing board right now that will be a large aperture telescope with UV and Optical capabilities will be the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C), and even that will be a specialized observatory (even though it will most likely have a wide-field imager on-board).
JWST is already moving at breakneck speed. Do you think it's easy to put a large, deployable, segmented-aperture telescope out to L2 that will work?
This option would be disabled on stories about lasers.