Strange star stumps astronomers
May 16th, 2008
The Arecibo telescope (aerial view). Photo courtesy of the NAIC - Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF
An obese oddball of a star has left astronomers wondering how it could have formed. Dr David Champion and his colleagues at CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility publish their findings about the star today in the online journal, Science Express.
Found with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the star is a pulsar – a compact, rapidly spinning star – called J1903+0327. It lies 20,000 light-years away spinning at a rate of 465 revolutions per second – the fifth fastest-spinning pulsar known in our Galaxy.
Astronomers believe such super-fast pulsars started life as the more common, sedate pulsars that spin only a few times a second, but were later ’reborn‘ in their present hyperactive state. This re-birthing or recycling can take place, astronomers think, if the pulsar has a nearby companion that it orbits. At a certain point in its life cycle, the companion pours its own matter onto the pulsar and this extra material ‘spins-up‘ the pulsar.
The process makes the pulsar’s orbit around its companion almost completely circular. Or as astronomers say, the orbit has “low eccentricity”.
“This low eccentricity is one of the best pieces of evidence we have for recycling theory,” Dr Champion says. “But J1903+0327is totally different in that it has a very eccentric orbit which is elliptical rather than circular. So, the question is: How could it have formed?”
The astronomers think the pulsar may once have been part of a triple system of stars and was ’spun-up‘ by its closest companion star – which was either ejected from the system or worn away after it transferred all its mass to the pulsar – and now remains in an elongated orbit around the third, more distant member of the original trio.
But another possible explanation for the pulsar’s odd combination of properties is that it was born in a dense region of stars called a globular cluster, and spun-up by its original partner.
As well as having a highly eccentric orbit, the pulsar is heavier than normal with a mass of about 1.74 times that of the Sun. “A pulsar this massive could also rule out some theories about the state of the highly compressed matter in pulsars,” Dr Champion says.
“Pulsars like this are why you do these surveys,” Dr Champion says. “You don’t want to just find hundreds of objects, you want to find the two or three that are plain weird and we’ve found one.”
Source: CSIRO Australia
Jul 03, 2008 |
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Interestingly, I wonder if there is one egection point for energy or many. I have heard of a theory of a egecting from axial points, but I wonder if there might me thousands or millions of ejection points and a slow rate of spin.
The shape is almost certainly distorted from a perfect sphere, although by how much I don't know.
ROFLMAO!! Observed??!! Observed??!! Observed my @r$e!!! Have you even seen the kindergarten picture they called an artist's impression of that one? Tell me this. If these things are observed, why do we only have artists impressions of them? Black holes are science fiction - and that's a fact!
Cheers, Dave Smith.
Google Image searches for "black hole" and "spiral galaxy," and "galaxy" come up empty.
Galaxies because it's a well known "fact" that super massive black holes reside in their centers.
The whole concept just seems too incredulous to me. They're gravitational wild cards.
First, I excuse your extreme lack of maturity with your responses ("ROFLMAO!! Observed??!! Observed??!! Observed my @r$e!!! Have you even seen the kindergarten picture they called an artist's impression of that one?"), moving on, you asked a valid question, "If these things are observed, why do we only have artists impressions of them?" They are hard to image. Most of the time, we know where it is just by the X-rays it shoots out. This is especially true of situations where a black hole and star orbit each other. Observing the star, we can determine the mass of the black hole, and we can detect X-rays from the system, telling us that matter is being accelerated to close to light speed, a dead give-away for black holes. It's much like the scenario of extrasolar planets. We know Epsilon Eridani b exists, we've detected the effects on the star, used astrometric observations to determine it's true mass, and so on, but it hasn't been imaged. "Black holes are science fiction - and that's a fact!" This is the saddeningly stubborn state that many people attack from. They are unable (as opposed to unwilling) to be shown wrong. Once they make up their mind on something, it's unchangable. They believe they generate truth, that something is fact because they believe it, completely disregarding any possibility that they may be wrong. I assure you, there is STRONG evidence for the existence of black holes:
I present you Cygnus X-1.
This image, http://blackholes...hp?id=13&img=48 , was taken with a gamm-ray telescope. The central white spot is the gamma rays coming from the inner edge of the acretion disk around the black hole. Note that this is in gamma rays, not visible light. This image, first of all, should show why (what you call "Kindergarden") images of black holes are preferred, the real objects are hard to image. (Do they teach kindergardeners photoshop?)
I present you NGC 6240.
This image, http://www.physor...opti.jpg , was taken from Earth with adaptive optics in infrared light from Kepler.
I present you M87
Here, we can see a Hubble image of the centre of M87. http://space.news..._382.jpg , Guess what! It's a black hole. The jet is clearly visible.
I present you [I don't know it's name, haha]
http://www.fanboy...laxy.jpg shows two galaxies, the bottom one's black hole is emitting particles that are hitting the galaxy above (it would be more accurate to say the particles come from around the black hole, not within it).
Many black holes exist within binary star systems, where one black hole eats a star. SIMBAD lists 257 such systems, known as High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXB), the first ten being
GRO J2058 42
V1521 Cyg
GSC 03588-00834
V2175 Cyg
TYC 3973-812-1
2E 2259.0 5836
TYC 4016-883-1
V490 Cep
V669 Cep
4U 2238 60
You can continue to go on believeing that black holes don't exist all you want, there's certainly nothing preventing you from doing so. I will say that they have been observed, measured, and well studied.
Dave, the electric theory of the universe is completely nonsense. For your information, neutron stars are not unproven. They are known to exist. Pulsars are examples of such and there are thousands of known pulsars (they are easily detectable by periodic flashes).
I wish to now bring up the terrifyingly funny irony of a person advocating the electric theory, and believing black holes and neutron stars don't exist, and then calling those of us who can accept reality "So-called intelligent people [that] wander off into Wonderland".
Cheers.
Let me put it in terms you might be able to understand, Dave Smith. You can see a light from a distance when it is turned on, but if you were searching a dark hill at night looking for a light that is turned off, does that mean it doesn't exist?
Of course with black holes there are many more factors to consider, but that's a general idea. It would have been much harder for us to detect and prove the existence of black holes if space were a lot darker and we didn't have stars lighting up the place and providing a backdrop the black holes can interact with. Lucky for us, we do have these things, and though it has taken years of fine tuning and study, black holes are just one of many hitherto theories that are able to be proven as fact.
I'm terrible at explaining, but I think those of you a lot more learned on the subject than I can figure out what I'm saying! It's kind of hard to simplify without omitting too much fact, so my apologies for that.
For now, I'm just going to assume that because all I have here is the name Dave Smith to go by and no real pictures or evidence, that you, sir, don't exist.
Not that I mind changing the math - but the new math has to be better than the old math before it will fall into common usage.
Lord Jag - Good point about pulsars perhaps having more than one ejection point in the same plain. If the occasional pulsar had double the number of ejection points in a plain relative to the observers on Earth then it would appear to spin at double speed or at least appear to have a faster spin and/or a different period.
I am not against thinking that opposes the norm but making blanket statements saying that black holes do not exits period does seem a tad outrageous.