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Astronomers Discover New Class of Pulsating Star

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the shiny-new-toys dept.

KentuckyFC writes "It doesn't happen very often but astronomers have discovered a new class of pulsating white dwarf. The work began last year when the Sloan Digital Sky Survey found a few exotic white dwarf stars with carbon atmospheres. A mathematical model of these stars showed that in some circumstances the dwarfs could pulsate as the carbon was cycled through the atmosphere by convection. Now a few days observation of one of these stars has shown that it does actually pulsate as predicted."

11 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. What is love? by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Baby don't hurt me.
    Don't hurt me.
    No more.

    Wait, that's Chris Kattan, a different kind of white dwarf star.

    1. Re:What is love? by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 5, Funny

      The inevitable and predictable jokes people make when the word "dwarf" comes up in some neutral context are sophomoric and insensitive.

      We shouldn't belittle people for how they were born.

    2. Re:What is love? by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey. Don't get short with me.

  2. Pulsating White Dwarf... by thousandinone · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thats what THE LADIES call me!

  3. Not again! by StreetStealth · · Score: 4, Funny

    I quit WoW to get away from pulsating white dwarfs!

    --
    Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
  4. oh wow! by vajaradakini · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder how this sort of star came about? I haven't read through the entire article (well, the one that's actually going in the scientific journal not the condensed version that's linked), but it seems really interesting.

    Of course I also didn't know that white dwarfs pulsated at all, I generally thought of them as these little lumps of carbon that just cooled down. Does anyone know if the pulsations are due to the star cooling and contracting as it does so (I know this is a likely cause for neutron stars' "starquakes" so it could be an analogous process but on a smaller scale) or if it's something else?

    --
    what's that now?
  5. "A fly in the ointment" by The+Fun+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From TFA:

    Congratualtions to them but there is a potential fly in the ointment: what looks like a pulsating dwarf could actually be a binary system of two white dwarfs. Dufour is unfazed. He points out that the characteristics of the system are unique so either way, they've found a new class of something or other.
    Since binary stars are a common phenomenon and what they are proposing is completely new, isn't it more likely that the less bizarre explanation is probably the right one?
    --
    The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
    1. Re:"A fly in the ointment" by Changa_MC · · Score: 4, Interesting
      We've never seen a pulsating carbon convection star, but we've also never actually seen a binary white dwarf that looks like this. Both are highly complicated systems and neither is inherently more complex than the other.

      And the first gets +1 cool, where the second gets a -1 redundant. That's at least as important as any other rating system right now.

      --
      Changa hates change.
    2. Re:"A fly in the ointment" by toddestan · · Score: 2, Funny

      There's a saying, that 3 out of every 2 stars are in a binary star system.

  6. White dwarf pulsating power must be by Zabu · · Score: 4, Funny

    measured in GimliHertz?

    --
    It's all good.
  7. personal ad by arbitraryaardvark · · Score: 4, Funny

    Once upon a time, back at Alma Mater U, the campus newspaper ran an ad
    "Red giant seeks white dwarf for binary relationship." and gave astronomy professor Harry Shipman's phone number.
    Ever since then, ID has been required when placing personal ads.