Slashdot Mirror
Most Stars Are Single
An anonymous reader writes to tell us Space.com is reporting that 'for more than 200 years, astronomers thought that most of the stars in our galaxy had stellar companions. But a new study suggests the bulk of them are born alone and never have stellar company.' The key difference seems to come from the difference between the highly turbulent clouds that produce massive stars in groups and the less active smaller clouds that produce red dwarfs."
I bet these lonely stars spend most of their time hanging around myspace.com.
Uncensored Google results requested and delivered by email
What? RTFA? Huh, you're new here.
Anyway, where was I, oh yeah, Stars and their divorce rate...
So does this mean that the big two-for-one sale at http://www.starregistry.com/ will have to be rethought?
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Then you were taught wrong. Science isn't about absolute truth. Science is about finding explanations for phenomena, and making predictions based on those explanations. We can prove the explanations false by providing counterexamples, but we can never prove them to be true. The most we can say about these explanations is that we haven't been able to prove them false, and that as such, they're, AFAWK, pretty good.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Whoever taught you were incorrect then. Science's biggest strength is the fact that it is based around the concept that what we know can, and likely is wrong, and that it can only be verified by observing facts.
In this case, it's quite like relativity generalising Newton's laws - for large, easily observable stars, this rule holds true. But more detailed measurements indicate errors which happen in 'special' (or, in truth, more general) condition.
Development in science is nothing to be afraid of - sure, we were wrong in the past, and probably still are, but now we're a little more right. Maybe it's not a big problem, but it's better than sticking our heads in the sand and never learning.
(Besides, everyone knows Astrophysicists aren't real scientists... or at least that's what I tell my friends in that department. They usually don't disagree :) )
"Most slashdot users as well..."
We all realized how far down in quality Slashdot has sunk when the first thought on everyone's mind when they saw this title was, "I can think of way more married stars than single ones."
In astronomy class 4 years ago I learned that most solar systems were binary or more complex, so this is very interesting news indeed. I wonder if this improves the chances of more solar systems having planetary companions, since I'd think it less likely for binary or trinary systems to have planets since more matter in the system is taken up in star mass.
This might also increase the calculable possibility for habitible planets in our galzaxy too.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
And here I thought I was going to learn how I might have a shot at Kate Beckinsale or Lucy Liu, but instead it's only some lame story about astronomy. Thanks for getting my hopes up once again slashdot!!!
sheesh!
The article goes on to explain that red dwarfs (tiny stars, much smaller than the sun) are much more common that sun-like and larger stars, and that red dwarfs are much less likely to be binaries. So, in total stars are more likely to be single.
However, from my reading it seems that the conventional wisdom that most sun-like stars are binaries is still true. I once learned the humorous mnemonic "Three out of every two stars is a binary".
It's probable that *everything* you have been taught will some day have to be "unlearned". In this case, as with many others, it's not so much that what you were taught was wrong, only that it was imprecise. The article reaffirms that it is still true that most of the bright stars in the sky are members of multiple-star systems. Just the previously unobserved swarm of very dim, red stars seem to be largely isolated. Still consistent with previous observations.