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North Star May Be Wasting Away
sciencehabit writes "The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas each year."
Polaris must be losing nearly the equivalent of Earth's mass—or a little under a millionth of its own mass—each year,
In a little over a million years, we won't be able to use that particular star to navigate any more. IT'LL BE CHAOS!
That's not exactly a lot. I'm sure our own dear Sun is losing that much mass every year and you still see 5 Billion on its birthday card.
Slow astrophysical news day, I guess.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's probably losing all that mass due to heat from friction. It must be under tremendous pressure, seeing as how the entire night sky pivots on that single point. Long-term this will have huge consequences - when the North Star finally wears through completely the entire universe will ricochet off into nothingness like a spinning top.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Thank God its not shedding the amount of gas a politician evacuates each year. It would be barley visible.
"What Are They Gonna Do When Were All Using Freenet"
After decades of overselling the North Star, is there any wonder there's so little of it left?
What an anonymous coward.
- Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
that's going to suck when all our compasses stop working.
North Star has been gone for a couple decades now.
Does this mean victory for the Southern Cross fighting style? Or am I just too much of a nerd so no one will understand the reference?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
GPS. Hey, they spent all that money putting those satellites in orbit for a reason ya know.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
All stars shrink just like our sun but not that fast to be noticeable after such a long period of time of observation. A more realistic idea (to me anyway) is that light pollution is simply making it appear to be shrinking. That is unless it was observed by something like Hubble from space.
too much fiber?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
...make our own star in the sky.
But really, it could be done.
There is a semi-stable orbit up there that isn't too large that it couldn't replace it
All it needs to be is a huge lens and some magical arrangement of mirrors to allow pretty much omni-directional capture of sunlight with no moving parts, but semi-directional output down towards Earth.
You COULD have moving parts, but it would be more complicated than it need be. All it needs is some fuel and corrective orbit systems so it doesn't break away and end up spiraling away to a horrible death.
Um, Christ died about 2,000 years ago.
Facts have a liberal bias.
I don't know what mythos you are referring to, but I doubt it will affect anyone outside your sect.
Besides, Catholics don't speak for all Christianity, and their mythos is radically different from anyone elses. Most denominations that I know don't teach that the north star has any added significance.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Sounds like my Uncle Fred...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I was brought up Catholic and part of the mythos is that the north star was born when Christ was born. It's what led the three wise men too Him. When the north star is gone will that symbolize that Christ is dead?
Not Polaris. Even Arthur C. Clarke knows that!
It blew out a Flip Flop, stepped on a Pop Top.
Table-ized A.I.
just forward all AOL disks and discount mortgage mailers to it.
Table-ized A.I.
Just combine it with the star Pushlaris, and it will all balance out
Table-ized A.I.
CSB: A pub I used to frequent had live entertainment in the form of a man on stage with a guitar singing various bawdy pub songs. A bunch of us were in one night when we convinced our friend ( a wonderful indian grad student who knew no fear) to get on stage and sing 'Margaritaville'. He didn'tt know the song, but the entertainer said he would feed him the lines as they came along just before along, like a human karaoke machine. So he get's up there and sings. The singer feeds him the line 'stepped on a pop-top' and he sings it as 'stepped on a pop tart' because he had never heard of a pop top.
I still can't sing it the original way, I like pop-tart better.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
There's a grain (or at least a germ) of truth in each of those posts. Kind of a cereal furrow of truthiness, just plowing along, planting seeds of doubt, perhaps to just lie farro, but then again, maybe knot.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Christ who? You mean the magical character with zero proof of existence in the work of historical fiction called the bible?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For celestial navigation after it has waned away, you can use the new spiffy Dark Matter Detector 5000 (Copyright Garmin). It points whichever way the scientific wind is blowing.
Silence is a state of mime.
Hrmm I'm Catholic and have a degree in theology. And this is the first time I've ever heard that the star of Bethlehem is supposed to be Polaris - it's certainly not part of the general 'mythos' as you put it
General teaching is that the Star of Bethlehem only hung around until not long after the Wise men left. And from a more scientific viewpoint if it's true then it was likely a supernova
ACK NAK RST
Um no. The Christmas star was seen in the East, not the North. The North star has nothing to do with Christ. It never has.
It found out we invented GPS and don't need celestial navigation any longer. :)
I hope the rest of the starts don't follow the lead.
I was an adventurer too, until I stepped on a Pop-Tart.
A solar mass is over 300,000 Earths, and Polaris is atleast 7 solar masses, adjusting for the most conservative of all estimates. It's apparent magnitude is about 1.9, while the magnitude of drop off (nolonger visible to the human eye) is defined at 7 (with 6 being relatively hard except under good conditions).
Setting aside the nuclear chemistry that will occur in the meantime (which tends to increase brightness), that Polaris is, in fact, multiple stars and the overall reduction of radiative and mass pressure that will be reducing the production/consumption rate*, I would posit even losing half of its mass, it would likely still be visible in 2000 years, which means the Northern Star will have since switched to Gamma Cephei.
So, no big loss here. Personally, I, for one, welcome our new Alrainian OverStar.
****
*You know what, I'm actually going to do these in the coming weeks. This is sound like a fun problem, even though I do a lot more in theoretical particle physics than cosmology.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
global warming.
...then this would surely take the prize.
Stars convert matter to energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation as a result of nuclear fusion reactions in the core. Ergo, they shed mass - our own Sun sheds mass at the rate of some 4.2 million tonnes per second (citation). This converts to pure energy, incident at Earths equator at around 1000W/m^-2.
But don't worry, if the iron cycle weren't endothermic then the Sun would be good for another 600 billion years or so...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
hang on, if the North Star was what was supposed to bring the wise men to the stable, then wouldn't they have come from the SOUTH, not the EAST??
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Please supply evidence that there actually was a Christ as per Christian Bible!
I've been to 3 separate universities where, in the restrooms in the science wings, above the toilet paper dispenser, was a note reading "theology degree. Please take one".
I was brought up Catholic and part of the mythos is that the north star was born when Christ was born.
Last I checked, the Vatican got out of the business of making physical predictions from religious belief. I doubt that is part of their orthodoxy even by error.
From the article:
So is it getting faster or slower?
Hokuto Shinken is invincible!
Why do I have to do all the thinking around here? Just find East and turn 90 degrees left.
Three men. Not three wise men. Because if you start out in Persia and follow the North star you're not going to end up in Judea any time soon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There was a philosopher/political activist/very naughty boy with the same name who died around the same time. Perhaps you're talking at cross purposes?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Funny, since Polaris wasn't the north star 2000 years ago. Perhaps you've been worshipping the wrong star all this time?
There is some more interesting trivia about the "Star of Bethlehem" mythology.
1. The "Star of Bethlehem" was supposed to be in the east. We all know that the stars appear to move from the east to west through the night. Stars appearing in the north appear to circle around the north star. and really can't be describes as appearing in the east. How can it be that any star, except Polaris, can appear to be fixed in the sky?
2. According to legend, the magi were wise men that came from the orient, and followed the "Star of Bethlehem". If the magi came from a location that was somewhere east of Bethlehem, and they were following a star that appeared in the east, they would be going in a westward direction. How did they get to Bethlehem? They would have to circle the globe to do that!
Just some riddles to think about. The story of the "Star of Bethlehem" is not an important belief of Christianity. However for fundies, it is in the Bible so they have to believe that it is exactly the way it happened. They have some explaining to do. There are more inconsistencies in that story, if you just think about it a bit.
Full of Gas and spewing on for years . . .
Explains so much about Star Trek VI
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
No there is a christion bible and I will not support it. You know it is total gibberish
Didn't I just say that?
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
But I will accept useful supplements, such as this...for now...muah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
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