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."

Comments

Oh my god!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Oh my god!

[Hatta]

The Earth precesses once ever 26000 years. In 13000 years north will be pointed towards Vega.

Re:Oh my god!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vega is a fucking space ghetto. I don't want to point to that part of the celestial neighborhood.

Re:Oh my god!

[ackthpt]

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!

It's more likely to collapse and blow off gas in a nebula before then, but agree, it's very hard to use nebulas as navigational aids during the daylight hours and tricky enough at night.

Re:Oh my god!

[SpryGuy]

Well, except that over that same time period, we'll be experiencing a reversal of the poles, and the accompaning period of magnetic flux that would make magnetic compasses rather useless.

Re:Oh my god!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right

Karma whoring:
"...Gamma Cephei (also known as Alrai, situated 45 light-years away) will become closer to the northern celestial pole than Polaris around AD 3000. Iota Cephei will become the pole star some time around AD 5200.

First-magnitude Deneb will be within 5 of the North Pole in AD 10000.

The brilliant Vega in the constellation Lyra is often touted as the best North Star (it fulfilled that role around 12000 BC and will do so again around the year AD 14000). However, it never comes closer than 5 to the pole.

When Polaris becomes the North Star again around 27800 AD, due to its proper motion it then will be farther away from the pole than it is now, while in 23600 BC it came closer to the pole.

In 3000 BC the faint star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the North Star. At magnitude 3.67 (fourth magnitude) it is only one-fifth as bright as Polaris, and today it is invisible in light-polluted urban skies..."

-Wikipedia

Re:Oh my god!

[jamstar7]

Vega is a fucking space ghetto. I don't want to point to that part of the celestial neighborhood.

I thought that was where the Mother Thing was from? Doesn't sound like a ghetto... Wormface and company were from the ghetto.

Problem is, what comes from Vega are Vegans. If they invade, no more leather, no more steaks. We'll be reduced to eating vegetables and tofu forever and ever and ever, amen

Course, the upside is, we'll produce plenty of methane, so it might help with the energy crunch, though I kinda doubt it'll be comfortable walking around with a gas pipe up my ass. Maybe that's why the aliens are so into anal probing...

Pivot point

[Lev13than]

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.

Re:Pivot point

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Not to worry. Once we get our booster technology straightened out, we can send up a big can of WD-40.

Re:Pivot point

[Chris Burke]

Don't forget the turtle wax.

Thank God!

[johnvile]

Thank God its not shedding the amount of gas a politician evacuates each year. It would be barley visible.

Re:Thank God!

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Thank God its not shedding the amount of gas a politician evacuates each year. It would be barley visible.

I know right! And then wheat would we do?

Re:Thank God!

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

I apologise for that; I have a very rye sense of humour.

Re:Cough. Earth's Mass?!?

[icebike]

Mass of the sun is 330,000 times the mass of earth.

So if it were losing an Earth-Mass yearly it would have had to be 7 times as massive as today at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and would only have a life expectancy of about 330,001 years left.

The Sun appears to have been active for 4.6 billion years and has enough fuel to go on for another Five billion years or so..

So I think you may have lost a few digits (in the exponents) when making your calculations.

Re:Damn...

[mark-t]

Indeed... everyone knows that the first magnets fell to earth from that star, which is why it always experienced a small tug in that direction. Future magnets inherited this trait by mimicking the original magnets' functionality, which was to adhere strongly to certain types of metals.

Relativity Speaking

[Niscenus]

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.