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Aging Star System Leaves Strange Death Spiral
jamie tips a post at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog about an extremely unusual astronomical phenomenon originating from a binary system about 3000 light years away. Quoting:
"The name of this thing is AFGL 3068. It's been known as a bright infrared source for some time, but images just showed it as a dot. This Hubble image using the Advanced Camera for Surveys reveals an intricate, delicate and exceedingly faint spiral pattern. ... Red giants tend to blow a lot of their outer layers into space in an expanding spherical wind; think of it as a super-solar wind. The star surrounds itself with a cloud of this material, essentially enclosing it in a cocoon. In general the material isn't all that thick, but in some of these stars there is an overabundance of carbon in the outer layers which gets carried along in these winds. ... AFGL 3068 is a carbon star and most likely evolved just like this, but with a difference: it's a binary. As the two stars swing around each other, the wind from the carbon star doesn't expand in a sphere. Instead, we see a spiral pattern as the material expands."
What? Doesn't everyone know this is due to The Last Starfighter?
Also, if you see it as a big cappuccino for even bigger aliens, there's no mystery at all about why they'd stir it in this pattern ;)
p.s.: I'm just having fun, not ridiculing the idea of an electric universe. But I believe that's already been done adequately.
...strange death spiral indeed.
You know if you say Betelgeuse two more times that creepy pervert from the after life will appear, so be careful!.
AHHHHH DAM, I said it once so if it is said one more time, the self proclaimed "Ghost with the most" will show up. You have been warned!
My God, it's full of queers!
(Punning with old meanings is so gay!)
"Have you noticed how, since the advent of the Internet as a massive information medium, there are suddenly all classes of strange, unexplained stuff out there?"
The communications revoultion coincides with the revolution occuring in astronomical observations because both are based on the digital revolution.
"I'm sorry... but either 21st century scientists are really lame, or we humans know *shit* about the universe and the laws that rule it. Wonder which one it is..."
"The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance" - The sidewalk astronomer.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE / Hamlet Act 1. Scene V
It sounds much better in the original Klingon
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon