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Mysterious Stars Surround Andromeda's Black Hole
UltimaGuy writes to tell us that Yahoo is running a story about a recent discovery that shows the source of strange blue light coming from the center of the Andromeda galaxy. The light is actually a cluster of stars circling the galaxy's central black hole with immense orbital velocity. From the article: "Such frenetic activity was thought to prevent star formation. Stars form when a knot of gas and dust collapses under its own gravity."
It's the resurgence of K-Mart!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Stinking ricers have taken over a whole galaxy. If you think galactic undercarriage lighting is bad, wait till you hear them blasting that galactic bass late at night.
Elements past iron can only be created in a supernova explosion. Google on "supernova elements" for more information. Of course, the element synthesis during a supernova explosion is due to fusion, but I'm not sure one could call it "star fusion".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wouldnt matter too much...our Milky Way and Andromeda are on a slow collision course anyway - by the time an ejected star got here, the rest of the galaxy would be right behind it. But no need to go hide in a cave just yet, we've still got about 3 billion years.
No... Stars form however they damn well please. Our current models suggest it is done under their own gravity, but our models are not reality. They are our understanding of reality and are modified or thrown out when we find our understanding is wrong. The universe is always right.
P.S. Sorry, it's one of my pet pieves when someone says "that not how physics works!"
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
Sounds similar to Saturn's rings. A ton of matter spread into teeny blocks in space by tidal forces, but still with enough mass to pull together into a bazillion little blobs. Perhaps the radiant matter/antimatter/energy from the black hole (I'm fuzzy on Hawking's theory on the subject) is heating the surrounding star-spray enough to light some of them?
Its too bad we only have one giant eye in the sky...
The thing about space, is it's really really big, huge, you know? So the distances are in light years which means whatever we're seeing happend that many years ago. If we were to launch a probe to see it we'd probably find much of the excitment has moved on, especially by the time the signals make it back to us and all the probe finds is a few empty popcorn buckets and candy wrappers left by aliens who beat us to the show and got better seats besides.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
To rule them all,
And in the Darkness bind them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
well....i haven't read TFA, but i'm assuming that the stars are going at a fraction of the speed of light, which as you all now is the speed limit in the Universe...(at least that's the theory)
:D)
but even at the speed of light it would take something from the Andromeda Galaxy a few million(/billion?) years to get here....
(of course the light is only reaching us now, so the stars might be half way here by now
and even if you think you'll still be alive by then, the chances of them being on a collision course with our galaxy (let alone Earth) are REALLY small.....
oh...and the energy necessary to make leave orbit (considering that it's a FREAKING star, orbiting a FREAKING black hole!!!) is...well....a LOT!!!
IANAA, but could these stars have formed prior to being caught by the gravity of that black hole?
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
Maybe this group of stars is not a natural phenomena? Que the twilight zone theme.
All kidding aside, they could have formed outside the vicinty and got pulled in. What keeps them from ripping apart from tidal forces is interests me.
If it appears to be physically difficult to explain these stars, perhaps it is an artificial constuction. I'd expect an advanced extra-terrestial civilization to exploit the immense power of the galactic core black hole. Who knows what they are doing with it? Sustanence? Wormhole transport? Communication? Entertainment? Maybe one hundred infant stars whizzing around the center has something to do with this.
My explanation is almost as bad as the fundamentalists. If something complicated happens, they say God made it rather some scientific explantion. I'm just substituting advanced aliens for God.
what I've heard is that while galactic collisions look like all holy hell breaking loose, the stars so rarely pass actually close to each other that they never meat - it's like two clouds of sand passing through each other. The only worry is that something massive brushing within a few lightyears of our solar system might screw with the oribits.
I've noticed that sometimes when dealing with spiral phenomena (hurricanes, tornadoes, whirlpools, etc.) there are secondary, much smaller spirals that are thrown off from the main body. Could this be in effect here? Could the black hole be throwing off gravitational "eddies" that cause stars to be formed?
"Mysterious Stars Surround Andromeda's Black Hole"
Thats just rude to refer to Kevin Sorbo's career that way. Sure I know he sucks in stars that are never heard from again, but thats no cause to put the man down.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
Well, as a religious person myself, I'll answer your question.
Simply because saying "Its because of God," leads us to a dead end. If we attributed everything to God, then our scientific progress would be halted. In fact, you can see the results of this type of thinking in our own history. It's called the Dark Ages.
Science has to take an agnostic stance in order to work. We have to take an agnostic stance in human knowledge in order to progress. If we depend on daddy (God) to give us all the answers, then we will never grow up.
An artist's rendition on their picture of the day:
_ feature_411.html
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image
--
fu
...in the so-called "Theory" of Gravity. (what, did you think I was going to say goatse?)
When will those fancy-pants university astrologers accept the truth of Intelligent Falling. It's in all the news, so it must be true.
To amplify: Science doesn't really care whether or not the universe was created by God, as long as He followed rules when he did so. Science seeks to understand the rules and patterns within the universe sa as to predict what we can't see based on what we can. It seems to work pretty well, so it would seem that God's playing along here, right?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Carne diem, dude. Carne diem.
The initial gas mix of stars is approximately 95% Hydrogen (H) and about 5% Helium (He), with a very tiny fraction of Lithium and heavier elements. Anything heavier than Helium is considered a "metal" to an astronomer, BTW.
Stars produce the most energy by fusing H into He, and they can also gain some energy by fusing heavier elements, but the amount of energy declines until you reach Iron (Fe), after which fusion no longer results in an energy gain. Once a star starts having a lot of Fe in its core, the fusion synthesis process stops producing the energy needed to keep the star going, so it collapses, and the rebound shock causes a nova, also producing elements heavier than Iron as a result.
The approximate distribution of elements in Sol, our sun, today is:
{'H':.785, 'He':.197, 'O':.0097, 'C':.004, 'N':.001, 'Si':.001, 'Mg':.00076, 'Ne':.00058, 'Fe':.00014, 'S':.0004}
Planets like Earth have a much higher distribution of heavier elements than stars do, for a very simple reason: they aren't big enough to have enough gravity to keep things like H and He from escaping over time, unless the planet is above a critical mass, in which case it forms a gas giant like Jupiter, Saturn, etc, which are big enough to retain such very light gasses.
Here's a table of the planets in our solar system, with mass measured in 10**24 kg, density relative to water, then the heaviest molecular weight of a gas the planet will retain, and the lightest common atmospheric gas which is kept:
Mercury mass: 0.33 density: 5.43 moleculelim: 43.5 gas: CarbonDioxide
Venus mass: 4.87 density: 5.24 moleculelim: 7.3 gas: Methane
Earth mass: 5.97 density: 5.51 moleculelim: 6.3 gas: Methane
Mars mass: 0.64 density: 3.93 moleculelim: 31.1 gas: OxygenGas
Jupiter mass: 1899.00 density: 1.33 moleculelim: 0.2 gas: HydrogenGas
Saturn mass: 568.00 density: 0.69 moleculelim: 0.6 gas: HydrogenGas
Uranus mass: 86.80 density: 1.27 moleculelim: 1.7 gas: HydrogenGas
Neptune mass: 102.00 density: 1.64 moleculelim: 1.4 gas: HydrogenGas
Pluto mass: 0.01 density: 1.75 moleculelim: 578.5 gas: None
In particular, oxygen gas, O2, has a molecular weight of 32, and N2 is 28. If Mars were just a little bit heavier, it would have a much more substantial atmosphere which would be much more similar to that here on Earth.
-Chuck
PS: Why yes, that's a Python dictionary above, you didn't think I'd write the table above by hand or post using "Code" frivolously, do you...? :-)
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green