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Hubble finds Mass of White Dwarf
Chris Bradshaw writes "The mass of the nearest white dwarf star to Earth has been measured accurately for the first time. from the article: 'Sirius B is just 12,000 km (7,500 miles) in diameter, similar to Earth, but its mass is 98% that of the Sun. Studying Sirius B has been difficult because of the bright light coming from its neighbour Sirius A, the "Dog Star." The results, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, come from astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.'"
additionally, more can be found on the white dwarfs in general Here.
I'm not fat, just big boned...
Mass of RED Dwarf
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050420-1 25927-9641r.htm
To bad they are going to plough it into earths atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_whoring
Although NASA (or the US goverment, it is all politics) does not want to fund Hubble anymore, the telescope proves that it is valuable every time again. Astronomers just need more time with the equipment to take more readings of an object so that they can catch the details. Is it an idea that a commercial company adopts the Hubble telescope and rents the time on the telescope out again to different agencies around the globe? The price for the adoption could be the operational cost of keeping Hubble in orbit in working order.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Time to update the Wikipedia entry?
"The core, no longer supported against gravitational collapse by fusion reactions, becomes extremely dense, with a typical mass of about half that of the sun contained in a volume about equal to that of the Earth."
Still probably has less errors than Britannica...
not mentioned in the article, at http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/Sirius
Selected excerpt:
"Sirius A is about twice the size of the sun and about 20 times as luminous. It is also one of the nearest stars, lying at a distance of 8.7 light-years, so that it has been studied extensively. From an analysis of its motions, F. W. Bessel concluded (1844) that it had an unseen companion, which was later (1862) confirmed by observation. The companion, Sirius B, is a white-dwarf star and has also been the object of considerable study because it is the first white dwarf whose spectrum was found to exhibit a gravitational red shift, as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity."
If they try to measure the mass of the Red Dwarf Movie they will need a pretty big set of scales, what with all that bullshit flying about. An air freshener might be an idea too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Coward
Perhaps the Mod thought the parent post was suggesting that "the advanced Siriusian aliens were planning to hit the Earth with Sirius B. Obviously the Siriusians are an advanced corporate culture, and are intent on "downsizing" their system, cutting their aging former stars loose, in an attempt to get lean and (very) mean, and to eliminate possible future competition from other evolving corporatized systems."
So what is it?
I still keep thinking the HST isn't really needed anymore
You just got troll'd!
The BBC article cited in the main post has no mention of the redshift associated with this whitedrawf. It just says "The mass calculations are based on how the star's light is distorted by its neighbour's intense gravitational field." This New Scientist article reporting on the same news does mention redshift - I like redshift: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8460&f eedId=space_rss20
Other info on redshit can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
they're still finding large objects in our own solar system http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/1 4/1836202&tid=160&tid=99 that we didn't know where there. It doesn't seem too likely that ANYTHING in another solar system could be measured with any accuracy. It seems to me that if our science was that precise then large objects would not go undetected fantastically closer to home.
Perhaps this is some cleverly disguised viral marketing to promote Howard Stern's move to satellite radio?
And, as always, it was the last place hubble looked...
Could this be where they all went to sulk when they found out that they had no shot at being in the Willy Wonka remake?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
they are decommissioning Hubble. It hasn't ammounted to anything anyway.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
White Dwarf needs food badly.
Cheesy Movie Night
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
- Raynet --> .
Or "Caucasian vertically challenged person"
Actually "caucasian" has gone out of vouge. "White" is now the accepted term.
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
Funny story: when Willem Luyten applied for federal funding to host the first conference on White Dwarf Stars, the application got bounced, since he hadn't filled out all the proper forms for doing scientific studies of human subjects!
They're actually called "white dwarfs" not "white dwarves" to help avoid confusion.
For all kinds of Ph.D. theses and more, visit http://whitedwarf.org/
Cheers,
Matt Wood, Professor
Dept Physics & Space Sciences
Florida Institute of Technology
Melbourne, FL 32935
wood@fit.edu
Sorry , Funny. Now Please mod us all down some more because on of the Official Slashdot Mods (OSM) originally zinged the parent before he had his coffee. Oh, BTW, cooperate with the DIA, much? Not so much? Much too much!
how do they know it was measured 'accurately'?
always mosh clockwise
Detectig and studying non-luminous objects like Buffy is a lot harder than luminous ones like Sirius B.
What about detecting and studying Lumines itself? And, if you value Freedom, what about Luminesweeper?
Me want gully dworf speak say. No got nothin'. Two speaks and no gully? Glubphulgers!
Their paper.
But how many stations do you get on this Sirius B? I can't live without my 70s gold.
Shouldn't the aliens from Sirius be called the Nommos
...dark elfs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdotted
Ironic, ain't it. You got modded down to -1 for posting an apology for a bad moderator, and the ambiguous AC parent got modded up twice, after first being modded as a "troll".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moron
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The Nommo are ancestral spirits (sometimes referred to as deities) worshipped by the Dogon tribe of Mali, Africa. The word Nommos is derived from a Dogon word meaning, "to make one drink"
Considering how the slashdot mods tapped into this thread and harvested 2-3 Karma pints^^^^^points from every contributor, yes, it does seem appropriate
The Dogon reportedly related to Griaule and Dieterlen a belief that the Nommos were inhabitants of a world circling the star Sirius
Oh, yeah and that too.
And it's a star, not a person. So that might go as "caucasian/white vertically challenged star/cosmic body".
(Slashes always give it a nice touch!)
The Dogon, a tribe in West Africa, are believed to be of Egyptian descent. After living in Libya for a time, they settled in Mali, West Africa, bringing with them astronomy legends dating from before 3200 BCE. In the late 1940s, four of their priests told two French anthropologists of a secret Dogon myths about the star Sirius (8.6 light years from the earth). The priests said that Sirius had a companion star that was invisible to the human eye. They also stated that the star moved in a 50-year elliptical orbit around Sirius, that it was small and incredibly heavy, and that it rotated on its axis.
All these things happen to be true. But what makes this so remarkable is that the companion star of Sirius, called Sirius B, was first photographed in 1970. While people began to suspect its existence around 1844, it was not seen through a telescope until 1862 -- and even then its great density was not known or understood until the early decades of the twentieth century. The Dogon beliefs, on the other hand, were supposedly thousands of years old.
http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/thalass2.htm
Health Insurance Quotes
I'm glad to hear the mass of Sirius B has been accurately measured to be 0.98 solar masses. But I'm more interested in the rate of mass change. If Sirius B can suck in enough matter to hit the Chandrasekar limit of 1.4 solar masses, we all will have a very bad day 8.7 years after this event.
Sirius A is 20 AU away from Sirius B. Any idea of the rate of mass transfer from A to B?
"I don't know, but it keeps me up at night."
They went to a comic/magazine collector and asked them how much that issue weighed.
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)
According to the MSNBC article, white dwarfs are the result of "Type Ia supernovas".
Is that really true?
It seems like an event like that only 8 light years away would have fried our little pitiful planet in a away that would be very noticeble today, or more likely exterminate all life.
Anyone know?
Excellent article on this topic.
Yeah, and tell it to all the the dead and maimed soldiers who are bravely fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country. And tell it to their families, their mothers and fathers, their wives, their children.
Osama bin Who?
"...the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
From Project for the New American Century (PNAC)Report, ""Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century", September 2000.
I knew my wife did something my collection. Who would've thought game magazines would do so well in space?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I would never tell the "families, their mothers and fathers, their wives, their children." of our brave soldiers, "...but by spreading false fear of terrorism, people like you help create it." Your a real piece of crap to dishonor our fighting men and women and their families to even suggest it. Shame on you
We'll figure out how to put people back in space just as soon as China does it. Coincidence? Hardly.
The biggest terror incident in this country lately was two Air Marshals gunning down some poor guy who was afraid of flying, then lying about some imaginary bomb threat. None of the 9-11 hijackers were Iraqis, and Saddam Hussein was a mortal enemy of Osama bin Laden. Hussein, brutal despot that we was, was a secularist, bin Laden is an Islamic Fundamentalist. There cannot be a "War on Terror", because terror is not a country, or a group, but a criminal act. But Bush has declared an endless war, without any metrics for what constitutes victory. In the process, we create more terrorist, while the United States is viewed as a terrorist country by the rest of the world, in favor of torture, carrying out a preemptive invasion of a weak country, being lead by War Criminals, and nearing bankruptcy. Our constitutional freedoms are being taken away, and we are becoming a police state. We sold our soul while Bush looted our treasury and distributed it to the Chinese and his rich cronies, and for what? So people like you could puff out their chests, and stick little yellow ribbons on your car, and otherwise feel good about your stultifying, impotent, drone-like existence? Good luck!
Thank for the "good luck"
Good Americans need it.
Why is my comment modded off topic? Bad modding is *always* on topic, since it happens on every thread!
There, we are agreed!