Slashdot Mirror
Dead Star Set to Escape the Milky Way
slackah wrote to mention a NewScientist.com article discussing a fast-moving stellar corpse on its way out of our galaxy. From the article: "The object, called B1508+55, is a rotating neutron star, or pulsar. It is the superdense core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova about 2.5 million years ago. The explosion seems to have ejected the pulsar with such force that it will eventually escape the Milky Way entirely, says team member Shami Chatterjee, an astronomer with NRAO and CfA."
I wonder how long before Bush declares war...
I wonder if it has a trench..
I wonder how long we can track this object once it leaves the galaxy. Any perturbations of its path will tell us about the dark matter between galaxies and the gravitational pull such putative dark matter exerts.
It's too big to be a space station.
This kind of thing makes me wonder how static the current shape of our galaxy is. Do stars (dead or otherwise) leave all the time, and do they ever come in from somewhere else? Do ejected stars form the cores of new galaxies? I doubt we'll ever get a chance to see much of this in action anyway since the galaxy in general moves so slowly, but it's still neat.
:)
It also occurs to me that this isn't really news: depending on how far away the star is/was, there's a fair chance that it left our galaxy millions of years ago
when you find yourself envying a neutron star.
We should immediately send a spaceship to the star to attach a message "We come with a mission of peace!" Who knows when there is going to be another chance for mankind to send a mesage out of our galaxy?
Ok, the article didn't say anything about when it will leave the milky way. It just said that B1508+55 was going to leave the milky way, and that it had been traveling for 2.5million years from its point of origin in Cygnus. That translates to a velocity of 1100km/s or being able to cross 1/3 of the night sky from the time of birth to the present.
There are two things that excite me about this. 1) B1508+55 is a massive radio emitting object which is boldly going into the intergalactic space where all that putative dark matter is supposed to be. If its path bends we might end up discovering a "dark galaxy". Of course someone with access to human astronomy records must be around to observe this when it happens.
2) Cygnus spits out a lot of these objects. Maybe if we get a very much faster one, we can have a more convenient probe.
If only my parents had been creative enough to give me a name as cool as B1508+55!
-Rob
Strange how one can be so impressed by something, he knows so little about...
The concept of escaping the galaxy is awsome, but it would be nice to know more about it...
So I did some research: Milky Way Galaxy is: ~100,000 light years in diameter; ~3,000 light years in thickness; ~250,000 light years in circumference.
Basically, its huge. The ratio of our solar system to the milky way galaxy is 1:65,000,000.
From this I believe that just about anything can escape the galaxy, it would just take an extremely long time. However, as I have stated, my knowledge on the subject is limited, so it is possible that the planets and stars are arranged in such a way, that the gravitational pull would always redirct any object to go back. (i.e.: meteors and asteroids pass Earth in patterns and intervals, without leaving the galaxy).
The subject is very interesting, and if someone could bring more light on it, it would be helpful...
Not millions - the Milky Way has only about hundrend of thousands of lightyears in size. So at least some of our ancestors could see it when it was in our galaxy for sure. If neanderthalls are our ancestors, of course.
for what it's worth, here's a simulation of Our milky way hitting Andromeda.
Things like this happen all the time.
Dard Vader not amused
If your parent was the biblical Abraham, then you would have as many brothers and sisters as the stars in the sky and the sand in the sea.
Of course, we'd end up naming you fairly boring and common names like David and Sarah.
It's like a molecula of oxygen escaping the uppermost layer of Earth's atmospere, yeah
You're right, the fact the galaxy exists is because the planets and stars orbit the galactic core.
It is exceptional that something got the escape velocity to leave the galaxy in a kind of time frame that we're able to see it happen in.
This pulsar is the new speed record holder for an object of its class.
That's no moon. It's a space station
"But officer! I'm just a pulsar setting a new speed record for an object in my class!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Guess most of us did :)
Have you noticed the guy some posts up telling about Darth Vader not being amused?
So are we going to die or not?
In case the above link gets slashdotted, you can find a lower-resolution mirror in: /usr/lib/xscreensaver/galaxy
You can change other parameters as well, such as number of galaxies, their size, even their colors!
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I want to hitch up with the civilization that is using that thing as a ride outta this dump! :)
It's a Bagel.
The story explains that the force of the supernova appears to have accelerated the stars core away from our galaxy and that soon it will move out... but if there was an "explosion" surely the stars core would be at the CENTRE of the explosion, so relative to the rest of the galaxy the force exerted on the star by the supernova would be pretty much zero (cancel itself out by pushing in all directions at once)...?
Anyone care to explain it to a long-time-ago astrology student?
It's a trap!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Those neutron stars are the product of stellar cores collapsing into a neutron star (and then sheding the outer hull thats impacting on the core rebounce shockwave in a class II supernova).
Now if such a collapse isnt absolutly symetrical, there will be higher spherical hermonics in the neutron core oszillation, and thus the impact of the hull on the core will give it a random impuls vector (the first harmonic being the 2 hemispheres oszilating with 180degree phase difference).
The observation of those fast moving neutron stars helped the understanding of this processes, as there isnt much that can accelerate them after their creation to this speeds.
A common speed of a class2 supernova product is in the 100-1000 km/s range (about 2 orders of magnitures lower than the speed of the the ejected hull, thus the visible SNR still seemingly have the neutron star in the center), which is way enough for most to leave our galaxy (300 or so is needed)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
They aren't.
Oh! You misread the title in an unexpected way and posted about it! Haha! Everyone quick, mod this guy up!
Isn't this the same star getting shot out of the milky way that was mentioned on Slashdot a few months ago? I remember it was being used as proof for there being a giant black hole in them middle, the gravitational forces somehow got pretty strong as the star spun around the edge of the hole accelerating it to beyond the escape velocity of the gravitational forces from the black hole. Maybe it's a new theory to the same rebellious star
The earth will be long dead, come on show a little knowledge.
finally... darth vader is leaving us alone and returning to his galaxy far far away.
OMG! DON't LET IT GET AWAY! SEND THE AMERICANS TO RETRIEVE IT!
ON second thought.. I slightly recall the "retrieving"-abilities of the US army and some guy who's bin pretty laden.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've created. The ability to leave the Milky Way is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
/. consisting of just a modified Star Wars quote...)
(My God... that's the second consecutive post I've made on
Yup...
In other news, the star in question was said to have been heard screaming, "Watch out, that mad candy bar has rabies!!!"
As Covenant said, "dead stars still burn".
Elvis Presley has left the galaxy.
Oh... That's all it is. Ok, back to playing Galaxies...
After that, it will change course to take care of the rebel base on Dantooine soon enough. :)
iF yA CAn'T bAFFLe ThEM WiT bRILLO-YONcE, bAfLLe ThEM WiT b00L-ShEeT.
Radio transmissions have been detected from an area in space outside of our galaxy that lies on the star's path. When decoded, a voice could be heard to say:
"Bring out your dead!"
Technoli
Yet another fine example of galactic garbage disposal system working properly. Roger Wilco's involvement is rumored, although StarCon declined to confirm it.
It's escaping the galaxy, so it probably is hiding something. Probably Weapons of Mass Destruction! We have to eliminate it to protect the freedom of the American People in our fight against interstellar terror!
Yes but then I figure it couldn't be because they say specifically : "In a galaxy FAR AWAY". So the Death Star was never in our galaxy in the first place.
It is a giant spaceship transferring aliens out of our galaxy before it meets its fate with the Andromeda galaxy. We should follow them soon!
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Unfortunately, the poster got the DEATH star confused with the DEAD star -- the DEATH star collects the souls of other stars.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
dunno, must've blinked
Slow-moving corpses are bad enough, but fast-moving ones are just scary! I still haven't gotten 28 Days Later out of my head!
It's weird indeed. Not only do I recognize the exact phrase I can even HEAR the tonality in wich Vader gives the spech. In english AND in german. *sigh*
I didn't, but I wondered which movie actor was sending his/her ashes into cosmos now. (And how the heck they got that far out.)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
This sounds a bit like a dupe or just old news, I've heard it before. Of course it really is *really* old news, but.. um.
Anyway it would be nice to project its path ahead to see what civs need bailing out. Then NASA's warp drive project has a goal! Maybe we should keep our scopes and neutrino detectors on that region of space to see if any other civs already have mounted a hypervelocity rescue effort? Note the star is seen 7000 years in the past, so it is actually 20 light years or so closer to its victims than it looks.
You know what, word supernova make no sense to me now a day I am more concern about superdome and astrodome. Yogi
7700 years, anyway, according to the article.
But it's never a good idea to take these announcements at face value. It's far from clear the thing has anything to do with a supernova, or that it's a neutron star at all -- presuming any of them exist at all. What we do know is that its light (radio, x-rays, etc.) pulses at a rate too fast for them to understand unless it's a tiny thing spinning.
The reason they insist it has to be something spinning is that they have studied almost no plasma fluid dynamics, so they can't understand something blasting out radio, light, and x-rays that doesn't have a star in the middle of it. They don't understand fluid instabilities and current oscillations, so they're at a complete loss to understand the (quite common) sudden, often temporary changes in oscillation rate in pulsars.
What little they have studied, typically, is a trivial approximation to plasma fluid dynamics known as "magneto- hydro-dynamics" (MHD) which assumes space is superconducting and magnetic fields can't change distribution or strength. (They talk in all earnestness of magnetic fields "frozen" in place -- even in the sun!) Therefore, they can't understand how large flows of charged particles -- currents, which they insist on calling "jets" -- produce their own magnetic fields and flow along them, or how these flows' fields can interact in marvelously complex ways.
Everything you read about "dark matter", "supermassive black holes", and "neutron stars" amounts to a desperate attempt to find some way to make the extremely weak and purely attractional gravity account for the complicated things they see. The mathematics behind plasma fluid dynamics is too hard for them, and they just can't stand that. It makes their press releases funny to read, but it's sad, too. (Think of the lives wasted on planetary epicycles.)
*NM*
Good, inexpensive web hosting
At the risk of sounding like a dick ( which I am, make no mistakes ), here are some fun facts.
1) New Orleans is below sea level
2) It's almost right on the gulf. So close as to not to matter.
3) People have known the danger for *years*. So much so that I saw a tv special last year on the dangers of a hurricane to New Orleans. I live in california.
4) We saw this thing heading right for New orleans on TV days in advance.
Now, taking all these facts together, I wouldn't even be *living* in new orleans. But say I am, and I see this thing headed my way. I'm finding whatever means of transportation I can find and heading to the hills. If that means walking, that's what it means.
Don't feed me this bullshit about not having any way to get out of town. That's a crock. If my life is on the line, then you can bet your ass I'll come up with a method of travel fast enough to get me to high ground. All that is is an excuse for the apathetic who, mistakenly, let others convince them it was all going to be ok. Put simply: It was laziness.
If you want to know why a place like slashdot isn't plastering the front page with donation requests like for 9/11, here's a clue: There wasn't media coverage several days before the tragic event. Those in the towers didn't go in there knowing a plane was going to crash into them.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
There are plenty of papers published by serious plasma researchers. Astrophysicists don't read them. That's what makes it sad, but it's also what makes the press releases positively comical.
Birkeland currents have been studied for more than a century, ever since they were elucidated as the process behind the Aurora Borealis. Next time you meet an astrophysicist, ask why Birkeland currents can operate between the sun and Earth, but not between any distant star and anything else. (The answer will be sad, but funny.)
We are lucky that in this case life does not imitate art precisely. Read Nemesis by S. Lem for reference.
You can't handle the truth.
"Nein, Luke, ich bin ihr Vater!"
"May das Force be mit du!"
:)
Did anyone misread
" Oh! You misread the title in an unexpected way and posted about it! Haha! Everyone quick, mod this guy up!"
as
"Sometimes, I like to go down to my local zoo and masturbate the penguins"?
No? Just me then?
Alrighty...
Jeez, we gotta get a cooler name for our galaxy. The Zornax Spiral or something. Anything.
*waves hand*
See, the Jedi Mind trick works even here, my young apprentices. Then again, that's not so surprising... from a certain point of view, of course.
Sarcasm or merely inarticulate you're missing the point. Electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic forces are largely IGNORED by the astrophysics community despite their obvious importance. Said forces figure in combustion of gas in a bunsen burner in highschool, not that you'd ever hear it from your teacher because orthodox science is possessed of orthodoxy that says it isn't important.
They ARE important, and beyond the simplistic things that astrophysicists deign to deal with like the Coulomb Barrier in stellar fusion which they gloss over in favor of the gravitational collapse angle. It's just too bad that we don't have the level of understanding of electromagnetism and ions that Tesla had but we've got tons of lovely extreme theories about gravity.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
For those of you who stink at stellar metric measures, like me, Google knows all:
1 100 (kilometers per second) = 2 460 629.92 miles per hour
Damn.
Such currents in near-vacuum plasma, called Birkeland currents, have been directly detected flowing between stars. Finding and analyzing these (real, measurable) flows has to be more interesting than mapping interstellar "gas" density or chasing "dark matter" unicorns. Actually to measure a current flowing between the Milky Way and a Magellanic cloud would make a career -- and ultimately make "dark matter" and "supermassive black holes" seem about as relevant to future work as phlogiston gas and cranial phrenology are today.
Now this is a good opportunity to calculate the probable escape velocity of our own galaxy.
This is a star, even if it is a dead one. I wonder if it is pulling anything out with it? A planet, asteroids, or anything like that. On that note, what will it do to us? could it slightly change any of our orbits or the sun's path through space? Just a philosopher's thoughts.
But it's never a good idea to take these announcements at face value. It's far from clear the thing has anything to do with a supernova, or that it's a neutron star at all -- presuming any of them exist at all. What we do know is that its light (radio, x-rays, etc.) pulses at a rate too fast for them to understand unless it's a tiny thing spinning.
The reason they insist it has to be something spinning is that they have studied almost no plasma fluid dynamics, so they can't understand something blasting out radio, light, and x-rays that doesn't have a star in the middle of it.
Once long ago, pulsars were discovered. The majority view at the time was that this type of oscillation must be caused by a star expanding and contracting - becoming dimmer and brighter over time. This theory was widely held until it was shattered by Professor Thomas Gold, of Cornell University, with whom I worked until his death. He showed statistically that the pulses had regular patterns which would only arise from a process where a driving momentum was continuously stabilizing the signal - preventing a phase drift in a way which was extremely unlikely in any process lacking a dominating momentum term. At first his theory that pulsars were neutron stars was considered so outrageous that he was not allowed to defend it at a conference - until the discovery of a pulsar in the Crab Nebula gave irrefutable evidence. After this it has been rarely questioned that pulsars are neutron stars - the theory fits the facts far too precisely, as no alternative "non-crackpot" theory has been able to do so since. The existance of neutron stars is heavily supported by relativity, the Standard Model for particle physics, and simulation of supernova explosions, among other things.
They don't understand fluid instabilities and current oscillations, so they're at a complete loss to understand the (quite common) sudden, often temporary changes in oscillation rate in pulsars.
Claiming to know something the entire astrophysics community does not? Why am I not surprised to find this nonsense on slashdot? After checking out another post you wrote, I can see you have some kind of agenda against the astrophysics community as a whole. Apparently any kind of explaination that doesn't meet with your intuition could not possibly be correct (you consider gravitational lensing to be an iffy phenomena, despite the fact that it's been observed happening in our very own solar system, in accordance to general relativity, since 1919! I do not understand how you can ignore such experimental observation and still take yourself seriously. I know Dark Matter is a bit difficult to swallow - something out there exists but it's difficult to observe directly - but "magnetic reconnection" is not entirely difficult to understand - you just have to realize that the term only makes sense when describing the nature of magnetic fields *inside* a moving plasma conductor, and in fact the actual B-field does not reconnect, but the H-field, which is a conceptual stand-in for the reaction of the B field and the plasma (much in the same way as the magnetic field itself is unnecessary to explain the universe - electrodynamics and special relativity alone handle that, but the notion of a B-field is convenient mathematical/theoretical abstraction) does "reconnect" - another process we can observe happening in our own galaxy during solar flares.
What little they have studied, typically, is a trivial approximation to plasma fluid dynamics known as "magneto- hydro-dynamics" (MHD) which assumes space is superconducting and magnetic fields can't change distribution or strength.
I work with the parallelization of second order three dimensional magnetohydrodynamics code at Cornell University. Space is *IN NO WAY* assumed to be superconducting - rather areas
Evidently the only thing that could carry that much momentum must be neutronium, because it has to be imagined physically tiny. That model fails, though, to account for recently discovered pulsars that would have to spin fast enough to break up even a neutron star. Whatever model accounts for them might as well be used for the slower variety, obviating neutron stars.
Do please read more carefully.
It's one thing for Eddington's South American companion expedition to have successfully recorded the sun's gravitation bending light (though his own plates from Africa were spoiled). It's entirely another to invoke galactic lensing every time one needs to discount inconvenient evidence (anomalous quasar red-shift, usually) wherever it comes to light.
I know Dark Matter is a bit difficult to swallow - something out there exists but it's difficult to observe directly
-- indeed, impossible, by definition --
- but "magnetic reconnection" is not entirely difficult to understand
Ask your neighborhood park ranger to explain topo-map contour-line reconnection. He won't confuse the contour lines with the geological features they trace. He won't imagine enormous energy releases caused by them moving about, even though it happens when a volcano pops. Energy is released explosively when the current feeding a magnetic field is interrupted.
Space is *IN NO WAY* assumed to be superconducting - rather areas with plasma are considered to be so ...
You know of somewhere in space without plasma? Low-density plasmas as found in (real, outer) space have finite -- non-zero, non-infinite -- conductivity, inconveniently so for calculation, but there it is.
Plasmas have a tendency to "drag" the H-field with them, as they are conductors. ... This type of behavior has been shown quite clearly to exist.
You'll have to find your crackpots elsewhere. It's one thing for magnetic fields to display a sort of inertia, and another to portray them as incapable of any sort of evolution or interaction -- as you must admit is common in astrophysics, even if not in your own calculations.
Mostly ballistic flows of charged particles at extremely high velocities are very correctly known as relativistic jets - phenome[no]logically they have very little likeness to electrical flows through conventional conducting mediums, as we would be familiar with on earth. ... And, while it's true that these flows would create their own magnetic field ... their motion will be dominated by ballistic tendencies and electrical forces. I do not see what is so hard to understand about this ...
You seem to imagine these jets blasting in an ideal vacuum, rather than in the (not-infinitely-conductive) plasma we both know surrounds them. Where is the current flow that maintains electrical neutrality in the system? For a relativistic jet of thousands (or billions) of tons per second of electrons, there must be a corresponding flow of positive ions, thousands of times slower, but of hundreds of times greater mass.
Where is it? Why do astrophysicists insist it can have no effect on the processes observed? That gives them two problems: they have to invent dark matter and supermassive black holes to account for events gravitationally, and they also have to explain why all those ions moving about can't have any de
Mistake avoided, as its fairly obvious
Spoken like someone who has never spent a significant part of their life without a car in a country where a car is virtually a necessity.
What transportation are you going to "find" if you can't afford any? Even if you got a couple hundred dollars, so you blow it on a rental or a taxi to get to the next major city. Now you're out of money in a city where you know no one, where no one is obligated to help you ("why didn't you do what your own city officials told you to do, instead of coming here with no money, no way to feed yourself, and no way to leave?") What then, genius?
Look jackass, these people did the perfectly rationale logical thing: the 1/4 of the population that didn't have a car either went to a shelter or stayed home because there was no other way for them to leave the city (no there weren't nearly enough buses to take them out before the hurricane - we're talking nearly 130,000 people without transportation - just look how long it took to get the 20,000 out of the Superdome - and for the buses they did have, they didn't have enough volunteer drivers for). They did what the officials told them to do, which was to go to the designated shelters because they were told they would be SAFE there. The officials assumed they'd be safe there because EVERYONE expected the military/FEMA to be in there within 48 hours. NO ONE EXPECTED HELP TO TAKE 5 FRICKIN' DAYS, ESPECIALLY TO THE SHELTERS! And a lot of those people didn't expect the water to start rising AFTER the hurricane had passed through which is why so many were caught by the water still at their homes or trying to get to a shelter. Jeez, you'll say anything to defend the moron we have for a POTUS.... China can move a million people out of the way of a typhoon in less than a week, but the richest country in the world can't move a 100,000 car-less people out of a single coastal city. Now there's something to be proud of... GOD BLESS AMERICA!
What you've basically said here is that its their fault for dying because they were too poor to get out the way all the rich folk did. The poor are therefore expendable, and that pretty much makes you a fascist. Sieg Heil, Herr Grasshoppa!
(All you other fascists, go ahead and mod me down, it won't change the facts on the ground - the car-less poor NEVER get out of the way of a hurricane WITHOUT HELP and NO is probably THE poorest coastal city we have on the East or Gulf Coasts, and my karma will recover, unlike the thousands of dead still floating in the stinking water down there.... you idiots....)
Spoken like someone who has never spent a significant part of their life without a car in a country where a car is virtually a necessity.
While I do have a car, I do not typically drive it. In fact, right now I'd imagine the battery is dead. Again. I do understand what it's like not to have a car handy. The only bits of information I'm missing here is why anybody believed they were safe in that city during a hurricane.
What transportation are you going to "find" if you can't afford any? Even if you got a couple hundred dollars, so you blow it on a rental or a taxi to get to the next major city. Now you're out of money in a city where you know no one, where no one is obligated to help you ("why didn't you do what your own city officials told you to do, instead of coming here with no money, no way to feed yourself, and no way to leave?") What then, genius?
I dunno. But you see, having made the choice to get the fuck outta dodge, I'd be alive to work on that problem. You see? I choose life over inconvience.
Look jackass, these people did the perfectly rationale logical thing: the 1/4 of the population that didn't have a car either went to a shelter or stayed home because there was no other way for them to leave the city (no there weren't nearly enough buses to take them out before the hurricane - we're talking nearly 130,000 people without transportation - just look how long it took to get the 20,000 out of the Superdome - and for the buses they did have, they didn't have enough volunteer drivers for).
Maybe you can explain this to me, because I'm confused. You live in a city that everyone KNOWS will be devestated by a hurricane, and you see a nasty one coming towards you. Now, the perfectly logical thing to me would be, you know, to get out of the fucking city. Call me crazy.
They did what the officials told them to do, which was to go to the designated shelters because they were told they would be SAFE there
And that was their mistake. And, those that lived, have learned their lesson. I don't know about the rest of you, but in matters of life and death, I trust no one but myself. Especially when it concerns my daughter. I'd imagine anybody above the age of 20 ( or so ) do the same, having lived long enough to realize people in government are usually a bunch of red tape fuck ups that only work in government because that's the only place where bad decisions are required.
And a lot of those people didn't expect the water to start rising AFTER the hurricane had passed through which is why so many were caught by the water still at their homes or trying to get to a shelter.
Funny, in that show I mentioned ( I believe it was on the education channel ), that was chief among the concerns: The levis breaking. Anybody that didn't plan for that at the government level should have criminal charges leveled against them.
Jeez, you'll say anything to defend the moron we have for a POTUS
You're losing me here. Where did I defend our Commander in Chimp? As much as you dislike him, I probably dislike him more. He's an IQ point or two away from drooling on himself during press conferences. However, that is neither here nor there.
China can move a million people out of the way of a typhoon in less than a week, but the richest country in the world can't move a 100,000 car-less people out of a single coastal city.
This disaster is big enough, there is plenty of blame to go around. The first fault, however, lays with the people themselves not getting the fuck out of there.
What you've basically said here is that its their fault for dying because they were too poor to get out the way all the rich folk did.
No, what I did was point out some facts and indicated what I would have done. I did indicate how I felt, but you picked up that ball and went in new and exciting directions. For example:
The poor are therefore expendable, and that pretty much makes you a
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
There are a couple factors here. While I agree with you (last I checked, legs are a free form of transportation, even if it takes 3 days to walk out of New Orleans), there are a few factors that influenced peoples judgement:
1) Families with small children, and the support items that have to go with small children (diapers, etc.). True, you can leave a lot of that stuff behind in a life or death situation, but it wasn't known to be a life or death situation until the flooding started (New Orleans weathered the actual storm pretty well). Plus small children are notoriously bad for taking on long walks (you either carry or drag them and they don't understand "life or death" very well). Think of single parents with 2 or more children under the age of 4
2) People who need the next paycheck. Most of these people probably didn't think there would be destruction to the point their employer would be wiped off the face of the earth. Besides, if I can't afford food, what good does it make to evacuate somewhere? I'll just starve when I get there. Starting a new job doesn't pay until then end of the next month. Plus, statistically speaking most hurricanes didn't destroy the city, so why should this one? (This is the major reason for NOT rebuilding New Orleans in its current location)
3) People with disabilities or family members with disabilities that prevent them from travelling. It's easy for us to say from the outside to leave it to natural selection, but our thoughts change when it's our family members in that position.
As such, self help really only benefits the single, small family, or the 14+ year family. I think we saw evidence supporting this based on the number of Huggies/formula/pharmicies being looted and the number of children in shelters and being air-rescued.