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NASA Finds Star With a Tail

Posted by samzenpus on from the streaking-across-the-universe dept.

Andrew Stellman writes "NASA astronomers held a press conference announcing that a new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star named Mira that's leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that's 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old. The website has images and a replay of the teleconference."

21 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Dropping seeds all over the universe? by Vampyre_Dark · · Score: 5, Funny

    Name this star Kirk.

    1. Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? by myowntrueself · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've seen all ~70 episodes of The Original Series and all the movies, and I've no idea where the Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started.

      I think it started with the urge to deny the existance of Kirk-Spock sexual tension...

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    2. Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? by kalidasa · · Score: 4, Informative

      Roddenberry's intro to the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture responds to the whole Kirk/Spock sexual tension thing in Kirk's voice with a disclaimer to the effect of (I'm paraphrasing from memory, and I read the book when it came out): "there's nothing wrong with two men being attracted to each other, but if I were to go in that direction, I think I'd choose a sexual partner who was interested more often than every 7 years." I can think of three women Kirk certainly slept with of the top of my head: the slave girl in Bread and Circuses, Miramanee, Carol Marcus; and there are a lot of probables.

    3. Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Funny

      >>I've seen all ~70 episodes of The Original Series and all the movies, and I've no idea where the >>Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started.

      >I think it started with the urge to deny the existance of Kirk-Spock sexual tension...

      What sexual tension?

      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
    4. Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? by Bemopolis · · Score: 3, Informative

      I started a list, but rather than underline my geek-dom of All Things Trek, I'll just demonstrate a mastery of Some Things Interweb:

      Kirk's Bedpost Notches

      In my defense, there were a couple that even I couldn't remember.

      --
      "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
  2. The NASA folks must have been watching bad films by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    They describe it as traveling at "supersonic" speeds when they should know there is no sound in the vacuum of space.

    They should tell us how many parsecs it could do the Kessel run in.

  3. NASA discovers G-class star 8 light minutes away by slyborg · · Score: 4, Funny

    What a terrible headline and linked article. Mira is a famous red supergiant, the "name-star" of the Mira-class variables. Mira is one of the largest known stars and has been known to astronomers for at least 400 years.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira

  4. Re:NAME IT SKYWALKER AND STOP BEING AN ASSFAGGOT by Vampyre_Dark · · Score: 5, Funny

    Only if it wanted to drop seeds on it's sister star.

  5. Faster than a speeding bullet? by SamP2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Newsflash: Our own Sun's velocity is 217 km/s (relative to the galactic center) and 20 km/s relative to the average speed of neighboring stars.

    For comparison, a "speeding bullet" slugs anywhere from around 1km/s (sniper rifle) to ~100m/s (short-barrel pistol).

    In addition, Wikipedia states that Mira's velocity is 63.8km/s -- which is actually slower than our own's sun (which has no "tail"), leading to two conclusions: (1) Mira's tail is caused by some other factor than it's velocity alone, and (2) Mira's speed is also so faster than a "speeding bullet" beyond comparison. In other words, the comparison is not just off-scale but also irrelevant.

    If you insist on using laymen's "cool-sounding" metaphors to describe scientific phenomena, at least check your facts and context, or you will just make a moron out of yourself.

    1. Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? by Kelz · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well anyway, the real question is:

      Is it more powerful than a locomotive?

    2. Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? by DeadChobi · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, the REAL question is: Will it blend?

      --
      SRSLY.
    3. Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? by sholden · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, because when they say supersonic they couldn't possibly mean oh I don't know faster than the speed of sound...

      You know the speed that pressure changes can propogate through a fluid (such as the not-quite-vacuum intertelar medium around the star). That speed in which there's a change in the physics due to the formation of a shock wave (because the object is traveling faster than the pressure shift that "tells" the "upstream" fluid that the object is there).

      100km/s or there abouts - depends on the local density of the interstellar medium.

  6. Re:Collision Course by kypper · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone better call Bruce.
    Campbell or Willis?

    I'd prefer the former; it would be... groovy.

  7. Relative to what? by mukund · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, relative to what object?

    --
    Banu
    1. Re:Relative to what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      A speeding bullet, duh.

  8. You can't see the tail with your eyes by Dekortage · · Score: 3, Informative

    Read the article, bottom of the page: "Mira's tail is only visible in ultraviolet light, and does not show up in visible light."

    --
    $nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
    1. Re:You can't see the tail with your eyes by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Funny

      Read the article, bottom of the page: "Mira's tail is only visible in ultraviolet light, and does not show up in visible light." The same holds true for Karl Rove.
      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  9. The song remains the same by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Funny

    Pseudo-comet star, that is what you are
    Flying at supersonic speeds
    Though sound cannot propagate through a vacuum
    Tail lightyears long through outer space
    We know TFA will get the science wrong uh huh
    And the dupe will posted in a week uh huh

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  10. More powerful than a Wikipedia entry by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 4, Funny

    Relax, I just edited the article on ballistics; now projectiles are fast enough so that these stars are in the ballpark as far as their velocities go.

    Hmm, I guess I better edit the article on stadiums so that they can accommodate solar-massed objects while I'm at it.

    --
    You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
  11. Scientist as Educator by DynaSoar · · Score: 5, Funny

    I usually choke when journalists do a bad job presenting science. Sometimes the tables get turned, and they quote exactly what's said. Unfortunately. So, in the spirit of equal chain jerking:

    From TFA as presented on MSNBC: "If Neanderthal man had ultraviolet eyes and could look above the atmosphere, he could have seen the beginning of this tail forming," study leader Chris Martin, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, said during a teleconference Wednesday.

    AWEsome, d00d.

    And, if they had ultraviolet eyes on 30,000 light year long eye stalks, they could not only see
    above the atmosphere, they could see the tail as it formed, RIGHT WHERE IT WAS HAPPENING.

    OH. OH. And if the DINOSAURS had ultraviolet eyes, and could see above the atmosphere, they could see it 65 million years BEFORE it happened. And they could probably also see that asteroid coming and build SPACESHIPS, no wait, SPACE DINOSAUR MOTORCYCLES, they could get off the planet before it got hit, and fly to that star and live there, and then 65 million years later all wag their tails at the same time and make the star shoot off gas and dust like a BIG TAIL that we could see, because they wanted to say hi and let us know they were all OK and we shouldn't be all sad because we thought they all got extincted.

    I guess we can't all be Carl Sagan. Because then there would be BIL..... nevermind.

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
  12. Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film by Trillian_1138 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Whether you believe the writers thought this when they wrote it is another issue altogether.

    According to the script, they (Lucas) knew it and knew Solo was wrong. From http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/anh-script.shtml (A New Hope script):

    HAN: Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?

    BEN: Should I have?

    HAN: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve
    parsecs!

    Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with
    obvious misinformation.

    Emphasis added...
    -Trillian