Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Discover Biggest Star
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists at the University of Sheffield have discovered the most massive stellar giant, R136a1 measured at 265 solar masses, using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and data from the Hubble Space Telescope. It's in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small 'satellite' galaxy which orbits the Milky Way. Previously, the heaviest known stars were around 150 times the mass of the Sun, known as the 'Eddington Limit,' and this was believed to be close to the cosmic size limit because as stars get larger, the amount of energy created in their cores grows faster than the force of gravity which holds them together. 'Because of their proximity to the Eddington Limit they lose mass at a pretty high rate,' says Professor Paul Crowther, the chief researcher in the Sheffield team. Hyper-stars like R136a1 are believed to be formed from several young stars merging together, and are only found in the very heart of stellar clusters. R136a1 is believed to have a surface temperature of more than 40,000 degrees Celsius, and is 10 million times brighter than the Sun. Crowther adds that R136a1 is about as big as stars can get. 'Owing to the rarity of these monsters, I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon.'"
"In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they are not."
I hate this quote.
In theory and in practice, theory and practice are separate and different.
"Crowther adds that R136a1 is about as big as stars can get."
This week, last week we thought they could only get to about 60% of this size.
You'd think the scientist would be a bit more cautious before making a leap like this after a previous widely accepted theory was crushed. Of course tomorrow someone will be assuring us all that scientific theories are really more like facts than current, subject to change, understanding.
Of course theories are not mere guesses but they are often given as much too much weight in the scientific world as they are given too little in the civilian.
Additionally, there is the bogus idea that a revised theory should still be considered a theory. Instead a revised theory is now no more than a hypothesis, requiring fresh predictions (to be tested against new observation not previous data) and verification and requiring the fresh application of Occam's Razor (since a revised theory is also usually going to have additional complexity to patch up the previous theory).