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Kepler Watches White Dwarf Warp Spacetime
astroengine writes "The Kepler space telescope's prime objective is to hunt for small worlds orbiting distant stars, but that doesn't mean it's not going to detect some extreme relativistic phenomena along the way. While monitoring a red dwarf star — designated KOI-256 — astronomers detected a dip in starlight in the Kepler data. But it wasn't caused by an exoplanet. After some careful detective work, the researchers found that the red dwarf was actually in orbit around a binary partner — a white dwarf. As the white dwarf passed in front of the red dwarf, the starlight was enhanced by microlensing — a phenomenon caused by an intense gravitational field focusing light from behind. This had the counter-intuitive result of causing the starlight to dim when the white dwarf passed behind the red dwarf and then brighten as the white dwarf passed in front. This is one of the first discoveries of a binary partner through microlensing. 'Only Kepler could detect this tiny, tiny effect,' said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington. 'But with this detection, we are witnessing Einstein's theory of general relativity at play in a far-flung star system.'"
Can this be used to make inferences about the laws of physics, constants, etc. as they are at that distance/time ago?
Since the current Kepler has produced stunning science, I sure hope they put another one up when this one conks out thanks to losing the last of its gyroscopes. It's a shame that Kepler is facing a crash just as it is hitting stride.
It's already clear that the laws of physics don't permit FTL travel, so why are there so many ignoramuses out there who say it does?
Besides, it's been apparent for some time now that all that is left is good old fakepassword3. Oh dear, I seemed to have farted out some of your cum from my bare voothole...
till i realized it was white dwarf, not Red Dwarf...
Be seeing you...
Ye cannae change the laws o' physics
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Kepler should have stepped in and told the dwarf to stop.
OTOH "White Dwarf Warp Spacetime" sounds like something the Hulk would say, so perhaps a wise move to stand back and watch.
Already 10 posts! And not one reference on how stupid creationists are! Nor any refs to Nazis either.
Will have to come back later.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Maybe we can use imagination to move white dwarfs around to create dark matter bridges between the stars?
Not related to TFA per se, but from what I am understanding of exoplanet spotting is that it is predicated on a star and planet pair being observed being on an orbital plane of which Kepler can observe the edge. As otherwise how would the star light be seen to dim/brighten. Is this a fair statement? And if so does that mean that we are only capable (at the moment - I'm sure the future Lunar observatories will change things) of discovering exoplanets that lie on a plane whose edge points to Earth? And are the orbital planes of exoplanets parallel to our own solar system, or are they distributed all over the place?
I want to know for both the science, plus pretty well every science fiction book I have read has the protagonists entering planetary systems along the orbital plane (except for the sneaky bad guys who attack from above or below).
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
LOL@SpaceTime
Physicists and creativity is bad combination.
I can't help but notice that as our technology becomes more and more advanced, the narrative gets closer to and more interchangeable with sci-fi..
The starships prime objective is to hunt for small worlds orbiting distant stars, but that doesn't mean it's not going to detect some extreme relativistic phenomena along the way. While monitoring a red dwarf star — designated KOI-256 — the crew detected a dip in starlight in the Kepler data. But it wasn't caused by an exoplanet. After some careful detective work, flight astrophysicist Lt. Slarti B. Artfast reported that the red dwarf was actually in orbit around a binary partner — a white dwarf.
I swear, this is how I read 80% of the astronomical articles I come across.
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It is mostly the fine structure constant that is used to check if the laws of physics are the same at huge distances. Any change in this would change the relative positions of the absorption spectra of hydrogen, et al, and this fine structure constant contains planck's constant, electric charge and emissivity of free space (IIRC) that have no reason to change in such a way as to keep this fine structure constant the same if any or all of these values change.
And absorption spectra, even redshifted, keep the same relative positions based on the value of that constant.
To the limit of possible resolution, the laws of physics are the same back to at least a billion or so years after the big bang.
I would comment on the word "counterintuitive" as used in this posting. The original article said that IF you're looking for transients, then this result is counterintuitive. It was phrased in a correct way, that this was unusual phenomenon if your brain is thinking it should be a transient.
However, I read the reposter to Slashdot's cutup of the original article in this way: Hey, they were looking for transients and found a microlensing event that was counterintuitive (acted differently than the usual microlense, and common sense). This isn't the case. What happened is exactly what you observe for a microlensing event. When you just see the red dwarf, it's its usual brightness. When the white dwarf companion swings around and passes in front of it, in our line of sight, the red dwarf's light gets lensed towards us, spiking up in brightness, then fading away as the white dwarf passes by.
The way the post was set up, it should have read something like "...instead they found a microlensing event. Unlike a transit, this situation had the effect of..." what I said earlier. This is an odd event, but not unusual/counterintuitive to usual astronomical knowledge.
I'm not sure I'm getting exactly across what I'm trying to say.
And the universe doesn't constitute a time machine by any meaning that would be given to the name.
I.e. we can travel forward in time at different rates in this universe, but we wouldn't call that time travel.
FTFA :- "microlensing — a phenomenon caused by an intense gravitational field focusing light from behind. This had the counter-intuitive result of causing the starlight to dim when the white dwarf passed behind the red dwarf and then brighten as the white dwarf passed in front"
Not sure why this is counter-intuitive. The light would only appear brighter if you were observing from the focus of the microlens, or near it; elswhere it would dim, even on the same axis if you were far enough beyond it. So it just depends on the strength of the gravitation and your distance away, and the two dwarves are likely to have different gravitation.
I'm feeling a bit dim and I guess I need some help from one of the big-brains out there, please.
I understand the lense effect causing the red dwarf to brighten as the white dwarf passes in front of it, but why would the red dwarf dim as the white dwarf passes behind it? I read the article and it doesn't clarify - at one point it says the red dwarf would dim as the white dwarf passed behind, at another it said that when the white dwarf went behind the red dwarf there would simply be 'no starlight enhancement', indicating that it wasn't dimming, just that it wasn't being enhanced.
Am I being dim, or is the article slightly misleading on this one point?
Hmmmm....a white dwarf dancing with a red dwarf. That should infuriate the skinheads!
After doppler shifts and transists, gravitational lensing is the 3rd most used method to find planets.
grivitational lensing planet detection
And, therefore, substantially cooled. I am surprised that it wasn't detected directly like all the other white dwarfs we know about. (Like Sirus B)