Newly discovered star breaks records for largest star....

[FrostedxB]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38343216/ns/technology_and_science-space/?GT1=43001

Astronomers have discovered the most massive stars known, including one at more than 300 times the mass of our sun — double the size that scientists thought heavyweight stars could reach.

These colossal stars are millions of times brighter than the sun and shed mass through very powerful winds.

The NGC 3603 nebula, located 22,000 light-years from the sun, is a star-making factory where flurries of stars form from the extended clouds of gas and dust. RMC 136a, which is more commonly referred to as simply R136, is another cluster of young, massive and hot stars, located within the Tarantula Nebula. This nebula is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy that is 165,000 light-years away.

Astronomers found several stars with scorching hot surface temperatures of over 71,500 degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than seven times hotter than the sun.

Pretty awesome, though if these are new stars, then is there a possibility that they could shrink as they age?

Also, what would happen when it (the largest star) died? A massive implosion?

 

[No Limit]

Cool.

From what I understand as they age their mass will be slowly depleted. When they get to the point where the star can no longer support the core they explode in a huge super nova then collapse to form a black hole.

 

[Tyguy]

If they are actually as big as they claim then the stars have merely hundreds of thousands of years to live, maybe over a million. Compare that with our 5 billion year old star, only in its middle ages. Crazy.

 

[Druckles]

We see it as 'awesome', or 'cool', when in reality, it's a sad situation indeed. These poor stars, already doomed to an early death, they suffer decade after decade as they slowly shrink towards oblivion.

They've spent too long with no-one to stand up for them. That has to stop.

 

[Tyguy]

We see it as 'awesome', or 'cool', when in reality, it's a sad situation indeed. These poor stars, already doomed to an early death, they suffer decade after decade as they slowly shrink towards oblivion.

They've spent too long with no-one to stand up for them. That has to stop.

thx for ur metalz...lol bai

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

thx for ur metalz...lol bai

Well the heavier elements have to come from somewhere ... They're doing the advanced civilizations millions of years after ours an important service!

So they're saying it beats VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) at between 1800 and 2100 solar radii?
(thanks to that "size of our world" image series that always gets posted in the image dump)

 

[Warped]

IF there are planets around this, I bet they are as large as our Sun is

 

[Dynasty]

What amazes me, is that we wont even see it 'die' until god-knows how much time AFTER the act has happened.

If our sun dies, we would only know 8 minutes after it happens.

Looking at the stars every night, you're looking into the past.

It blows my mind.

 

[Tyguy]

IF there are planets around this, I bet they are as large as our Sun is

I don't think planets can exceed the size of even the smallest stars, assuming you aren't counting neutron stars or white dwarfs...

Have they even given this star a name?

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Cool.

From what I understand as they age their mass will be slowly depleted. When they get to the point where the star can no longer support the core they explode in a huge super nova then collapse to form a black hole.

Scary as hell to think about.

 

[FrostedxB]

I don't think planets can exceed the size of even the smallest stars, assuming you aren't counting neutron stars or white dwarfs...

Have they even given this star a name?

The article doesn't mention a name, just where its located unfortunately.

 

[Tyguy]

i vote for "penis penis vagina vagina sandy nipples", alternatively, "VY canis MORE majoris"

 

[No Limit]

I vote "rosie".

 

[Druckles]

"Bob"

 

[YROC]

His name was Robert Paulson.

 

[jet_porkins]

Funny that I read about this the same day I handed in my FINAL EXAM for my astronomy class, so I can't bring this up in class discussion...

 

[Shakermaker]

Pretty awesome, though if these are new stars, then is there a possibility that they could shrink as they age?

Also, what would happen when it (the largest star) died? A massive implosion?

As I understood it this star has a very short life, just three million years or so. In comparison, the sun is about 4,5 billion years old and still has about 6 billion years to go.

When a star dies usually it collapses into itself with massive force and leaves a neutron star or a black hole.

 

[PvtRyan]

This news brings us a whole new category for "yo momma" jokes.

Well the heavier elements have to come from somewhere ... They're doing the advanced civilizations millions of years after ours an important service!

So they're saying it beats VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) at between 1800 and 2100 solar radii?
(thanks to that "size of our world" image series that always gets posted in the image dump)

Well, they are only about 40x heavier than the sun, they're just really large and thus have a pretty low density. I wonder what those stars look like, are they solid spheres like the sun, despite their low density? According to my back-of-napkin calculations, the VY star has 38792386086x the volume of the sun and is thus a billion times less dense overall than our sun. While the core is obviously dense enough for fusion, does the exterior look solid, or more like a cloud?

 

[FISHY CRACKERS]

Oh those silly stars, always trying to one-up eachother.

 

[jet_porkins]

When a star dies usually it collapses into itself with massive force and leaves a neutron star or a black hole.

I think astronomers have concluded that neutron stars only form for post-supernova stars that were at least about 8 solar masses large. Our sun, along with most other main sequence stars that are sun-sized (give or take a few magnitude points) will continue to expand for a couple billion years until it's a red giant, release its gas and create a nebula, collapse, supernova, and leave a white dwarf in its place to slowly sizzle out. Of course by the time the sun expands to its maximum size (predicted to be about 100x its current radius), hospitable earth as we know it now will be the "the earth that was," with evaporated oceans and no atmosphere.

In theory.

 

[Druckles]

I want to see that.

 

[Shakermaker]

I think astronomers have concluded that neutron stars only form for post-supernova stars that were at least about 8 solar masses large. Our sun, along with most other main sequence stars that are sun-sized (give or take a few magnitude points) will continue to expand for a couple billion years until it's a red giant, release its gas and create a nebula, collapse, supernova, and leave a white dwarf in its place to slowly sizzle out. Of course by the time the sun expands to its maximum size (predicted to be about 100x its current radius), hospitable earth as we know it now will be the "the earth that was," with evaporated oceans and no atmosphere.

In theory.

EDIT Nevermind. I am tired and you're right.

 

[No Limit]

Funny that I read about this the same day I handed in my FINAL EXAM for my astronomy class, so I can't bring this up in class discussion...

I hate to put you on the spot but since you went to school for this can you explain to me the concept of a flat universe? I think I asked before but this makes no sense to me. Many scientists believe the universe is flat. Yet we know that we can go up, down, left, right. Looking at the stars we can see stars everywhere. So how could the universe be flat knowing all of this? Is what we see in the stars a side effect of gravity?

 

[Escaep]

I hate to put you on the spot but since you went to school for this can you explain to me the concept of a flat universe? I think I asked before but this makes no sense to me. Many scientists believe the universe is flat. Yet we know that we can go up, down, left, right. Looking at the stars we can see stars everywhere. So how could the universe be flat knowing all of this? Is what we see in the stars a side effect of gravity?

We used to think the Earth was flat as well.

 

[No Limit]

Yeah, but the difference here seems to be that there is actually alot of evidance that the universe is flat. Including data collected from WMAP (data I don't understand in any way, shape, or form).

 

[Druckles]

2D flat or generally flat-shaped?

 

[No Limit]

2D flat or generally flat-shaped?

?

Edumacate my stupidness (sorry, I was educated in a US public school)? I don't get the 2D concept since what we see is atleast 3D (probably many more dimensions than that).

 

[Escaep]

?

Edumacate my stupidness (sorry, I was educated in a US public school)? I don't get the 2D concept since what we see is atleast 3D (probably many more dimensions than that).

I think he's trying to ask if its flat like a sheet of paper flat or has a generally flat/level shape where everything is basically on the same plane. Or if its flat like old soda and thus the universe lacks carbonation.

Maybe?

 

[PvtRyan]

I think it's flat as in "not curved in the fourth spatial dimension".

 

[Robbo]

I hate to put you on the spot but since you went to school for this can you explain to me the concept of a flat universe? I think I asked before but this makes no sense to me. Many scientists believe the universe is flat. Yet we know that we can go up, down, left, right. Looking at the stars we can see stars everywhere. So how could the universe be flat knowing all of this? Is what we see in the stars a side effect of gravity?

From what I've been able to figure out it's talking about the geometry of the universe. Eg if you imagine a grid inside the universe it would have straight flat lines rather that curved ones. This means that a particle like a photon will travel in a straight line when not acted on by a force rather than following any curve in spacetime. I imagine that if the universe was curved the particle would eventually end up where it started where as because the universe is flat it will just keep going... somewhere.

 

[jet_porkins]

Robbo's right. The "flat universe" concept doesn't have to do with the prism of the universe, but the way light travels through space. "Flat" doesn't mean dimensional, it means that the rules of geometry we learned in grade school apply to astronomical distances in space as much as they do on earth. For instance, the formula for the circumference of a circle is still 2pi times the radius. The angles of a triangle all add up to 180 degrees. These rules still apply to the large-scale universe. Different geometric rules would apply if the universe was curved/circular. That isn't the complete definition, but that's as confident as I know about it. One of the reasons it's a big deal is because we can be a lot more confident in our knowledge about distant galaxies and how old the light they give off really is.

 

[No Limit]

Ahh, you guys are awesome, I could never understand this before. So when they talk about a flat universe they mean in terms of if you shoot a extremely powerful lazer out in to space it will go on in a straight line. Not where stars, planets, and other matter lie.

But then knowing this gravity makes no sense to me. Anytime I watch or read anything on gravity it is a fabric of space time which in turn leads to objects being attracted to each other like one of those coin fountains (forget what they are called). But if that's true wouldn't space physically have to be flat?

This is the image I always see:

That satellite in that image doesn't make sense to me, shouldn't it lie on the actual fabric? Or is this an overly simplified illustration of gravity to try and make people like me that have no clue understand it?

 

[Bad^Hat]

I think it has less to do with the influence of forces like gravity on things, and more to do with the "shape" of the universe.

Maybe. *shrug*