Yea, I did the slackware thing back in the early 90's, too.
I like XFCE a lot, but lately have tried LXDE and think I'll stick with it. It's very lightweight, so very responsive.
Matt
Melbourne, FL
www.astro.fit.edu/wood
Yes, but it's not *really* science. It's a public works project for engineers and provides a place for astronauts and the shuttle to visit - justifying their existence. If instead we'd spent the money on on dozens to hundreds of robotic missions to other planets, asteroids, and comets - now that would have been some good science.
Matt Wood
www.astro.fit.edu/wood
Except white dwarf interiors will also have lots of oxygen atoms, and the lattice structure (BCC) is different from that of diamonds (interpenetrating FCC). And if you remove the self gravity the white dwarf matter would no longer be crystallized.
And this story dates from 2004 - breaking news! Definitely slashdot-worthy...
Stars on the main sequence get less dense the hotter/brighter they are. When the evolve off the main sequence, they get bigger still. It's likely this has the largest radius, too.
Very interesting formation mechanism... stellar collisions!
A friend happened to be the referee when this paper was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. He wrote: "I was referee of this paper for ApJL and rejected it, because the
author confuses accuracy with stability. The terrestrial clocks are
more accurate, but lose stability much faster than wds and
pulsars.
One a aside, the author is a hard creationist and has several books
saying Einstein is wrong. We are in good company."
No stupid is spouting off when you don't really know much of what you're talking about. Fact: for a long time pulsars *were* more accurate than atomic clocks. The technology of atomic clocks got better, but the neutron stars stayed the same. They are in fact excellent clocks - 1.4 times the mass of the sun, spinning up to 1000 times per second. Rates of period change roughly 10^{-15} seconds per second. There's pi x 10^7 seconds per year, so that's a very stable period:-)
Stars are a bit far to resolve, and these stars are about the size of the earth, so no pictures of this will be available in your lifetime. But assuming you accept that we understand physics and can simulate what things look like, please visit http://astro.fit.edu/wood/visualizations.html. This is not new. It's called the Roche lobe and is simply an equipotential surface. Here's an image from a textbook http://physics.uoregon.edu/~jimbrau/BrauImNew/Chap20/FG20_22.jpg
The mass losing star is somewhat teardrop shaped, with the point pointing towards the other star - that's where mass flows through. It's a 3D analog of a spring-fed lake in a valley overflowing a saddle pass and flowing into the next valley. The mass flow in this system is likely helium mostly, and the rate is equivalent to about 100,000 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers per second. The impact velocity is about 1% the speed of light.
It happens in binary main sequence stars. This is only one of 2 binary white dwarf systems that have direct impact accretion (the other is named V407 Vul). Usually the accretion stream misses the primary star, and forms an accretion disk. In these systems, the accretion stream slams into the the accreting white dwarf at a velocity of about 1% the speed of light, btw!
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, I did the slackware thing back in the early 90's, too. I like XFCE a lot, but lately have tried LXDE and think I'll stick with it. It's very lightweight, so very responsive. Matt Melbourne, FL www.astro.fit.edu/wood
Yes, but it's not *really* science. It's a public works project for engineers and provides a place for astronauts and the shuttle to visit - justifying their existence. If instead we'd spent the money on on dozens to hundreds of robotic missions to other planets, asteroids, and comets - now that would have been some good science. Matt Wood www.astro.fit.edu/wood
TheFinalScore podcast is good. They don't get free games or adverts from the publishers.
I wrote quickly and clarity suffered - apologies. These nuclei are closer together than the inner orbital for electrons, so no EM forces holding them together. It's a state of matter called degeneracy (have fun with that one, guys :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_matter#Electron_degeneracy
Matt
Except white dwarf interiors will also have lots of oxygen atoms, and the lattice structure (BCC) is different from that of diamonds (interpenetrating FCC). And if you remove the self gravity the white dwarf matter would no longer be crystallized. And this story dates from 2004 - breaking news! Definitely slashdot-worthy ...
Orion Min-Eq tabletop mount. Friend has one and loves it. $60 plus $70 for a drive if you want it. http://www.amazon.com/Orion-Min-EQ-Tabletop-Equatorial-Mount/dp/B0000XMX8O
Stars on the main sequence get less dense the hotter/brighter they are. When the evolve off the main sequence, they get bigger still. It's likely this has the largest radius, too. Very interesting formation mechanism ... stellar collisions!
These are great and free tools for making publication-quality plots as well as the analysis of the data.
A friend happened to be the referee when this paper was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. He wrote: "I was referee of this paper for ApJL and rejected it, because the author confuses accuracy with stability. The terrestrial clocks are more accurate, but lose stability much faster than wds and pulsars. One a aside, the author is a hard creationist and has several books saying Einstein is wrong. We are in good company."
No stupid is spouting off when you don't really know much of what you're talking about. Fact: for a long time pulsars *were* more accurate than atomic clocks. The technology of atomic clocks got better, but the neutron stars stayed the same. They are in fact excellent clocks - 1.4 times the mass of the sun, spinning up to 1000 times per second. Rates of period change roughly 10^{-15} seconds per second. There's pi x 10^7 seconds per year, so that's a very stable period :-)
Yea, I dated a forensic scientist for a while, and she thought it was a great movie and a great idea.
First post...
Stars are a bit far to resolve, and these stars are about the size of the earth, so no pictures of this will be available in your lifetime. But assuming you accept that we understand physics and can simulate what things look like, please visit http://astro.fit.edu/wood/visualizations.html. This is not new. It's called the Roche lobe and is simply an equipotential surface. Here's an image from a textbook http://physics.uoregon.edu/~jimbrau/BrauImNew/Chap20/FG20_22.jpg
The mass losing star is somewhat teardrop shaped, with the point pointing towards the other star - that's where mass flows through. It's a 3D analog of a spring-fed lake in a valley overflowing a saddle pass and flowing into the next valley. The mass flow in this system is likely helium mostly, and the rate is equivalent to about 100,000 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers per second. The impact velocity is about 1% the speed of light.
It happens in binary main sequence stars. This is only one of 2 binary white dwarf systems that have direct impact accretion (the other is named V407 Vul). Usually the accretion stream misses the primary star, and forms an accretion disk. In these systems, the accretion stream slams into the the accreting white dwarf at a velocity of about 1% the speed of light, btw!
"White dwarfs" is the proper plural form when talking about more than one white dwarf star.