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Supermassive Black Hole Destroying Proto Star System
astroengine writes "A new analysis of recent observations finds evidence for a protoplanetary disk around a red dwarf star plunging in the direction of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Ruth Murray-Clay and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics did the theoretical work. Stefan Gillessen of the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics made the observations using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The red dwarf star will make its closest approach in the summer of 2013, hurtling only 270 billion miles from black hole. (Or roughly 54 solar system diameters, as measured from the furthest edge of the Kuiper belt.) It won't get sucked into the black hole, but it will be flung back along its elliptical orbit out to a distance of a little more than 1/10 light-years."
This sounds like orbit not destruction. It's like how the earth and moon can orbit the sun without being destroyed. I'm sure some of the details will help with measuring the effect of the black hole, but this is sensationalized to an absurd degree.
It won't get sucked into the black hole, but it will be flung back along its elliptical orbit out to a distance of a little more than 1/10 light-years."
So, not destroying it, then?
Pfftt... other world problems.
And parsecs is a measure of the diameter of Uranus.
Silence is a state of mime.
Now, if SETI were to turn their gaze in that direction, this would be a great moment to learn the alien phrase for "Ohhhh Shiiiitttt!".
Uh, yes. Who implied it was a measure of time?
I propose that we protect these infant stars from the destructive forces of black holes by making it illegal for black holes to be within 1 parsec from any newly forming stars. As an added precaution, they should also stay away from all nebulae and other entities which have the potential to form stars at any time in the future. Help Stop Proto-Star Destruction by calling your congressman/woman today & demanding they pass HR-1@M@N1D01T.
Not really. In common usage, it's really light per year - or, the distance light travels in one year. In the same way, miles per hour is a measure of distance as well - it's how far you travel in a given amount of time.
Yeah, not like its possible to determine how far light will travel in a year's time....wait a sec...
Would you like a few like a few more light-minutes to think about that one?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
SCIENCE IS AWESOME
What's with the religious nonsense in the last paragraphs? It has nothing to do with the finding at all.
At least it's not a white hole.
No, those are arsecs. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I know you're trolling, so I'm the pedant who takes the bait.
Light-year: The distance covered by light in one year in a vacuum.
Very much distance, not time.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
A light year is the distance it takes light to travel one year:
| 0.3066013938 pc (parsecs)
| 63241.07708 AU (astronomical units)
| 9.461×10^12 km (kilometers)
| 9.461×10^15 meters
| 5.879 trillion miles
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=light+year
Though according to general relativity spacetime is 4 dimensional and the distance between two events can be measured in interchangeable units of space and time measured in light-years or light seconds.
We all travel through spacetime at the speed of light, in the direction of time, but when we start to travel in the space direction at a fraction of the speed of light, we still travel at the speed of of light, but as an angle in space time, like the hypotenuse (long side) of a triangle using Pythagoras' equation (a^2 + b^2 = c^2), with part of our direction in time and part of our direction in space. This accounts for most of the weirdness experienced with time dilation and dimensions appearing to shorten (the object is partially rotated into the time dimension).
From an earlier Nature story: http://www.nature.com/news/gas-cloud-hurtling-towards-milky-way-s-black-hole-may-harbour-young-star-1.11351
Discuss :(
Band "Muse" found to be the cause of this destruction.
He's DESTROYING a proto STAR SYSTEM!
+= E
The red dwarf star will make its closest approach in the summer of 2013
Hate to get pedantic, but didn't this actually happen tens of thousands of years ago (if not millions), and the light show will only get to us in the summer of 2013?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
A recent study shows that global warming, which results from human exhalations, will speed this process cutting millions of years off the life of this poor, poor Proto Start.
Thats the last time I base a comment on something I heard on "The Big Bang Theory".
All of the universe's problems are attributed to excessive carbon dioxide according to the BBC.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
your dimensions are like x, y, z, and j*c*t.
if you treat real time as a real dimension, you get - all over the place fucking with your euclidean norms.
...but I have a question for them:
Is it theoretically possible that a star could slingshot around galactic-center black hole and (either through the basic slingshot, or a combination of that plus frame-dragging by the spinning black hole) come out with near-c or higher velocities?
What would happen to it?
Given the number of stars constantly plunging into the holes that are (apparently) at the heart of every galaxy, and a timescale of billions of years, wouldn't it be almost certain that this HAS happened?
-Styopa
Supermassive Black Hole Destroying Protoss Star System
zerg and terran rejoice. are left to mull over the final war.
From my understanding, you just described Euclidean relativity and not general relativity.
But I'm not a physicist and special relativity is really about as far as I have grasped significantly. I understand Einstein's formulation of special relativity to say that Minkowski's definition of spacetime, which is opposed to Euclidean spacetime, matches more closely with observations. But a quick Google search seems to indicate that there is a growing set of theories that suggest that relativity and Euclidean spacetime can work cohesively, and that Euclidean spacetime is not just a framework for Newtonian physics.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Why is Snark Required?
Miles per hour is speed.
Light Years = C/Y (*Y given in seconds)
Distance = (mph)/t (*t given in hours)
And light years is a shady concept by itself.