North Star May Be Wasting Away 129
sciencehabit writes "The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas each year."
Oh my god! (Score:4, Funny)
Polaris must be losing nearly the equivalent of Earth's mass—or a little under a millionth of its own mass—each year,
In a little over a million years, we won't be able to use that particular star to navigate any more. IT'LL BE CHAOS!
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We do however have wonderful things called "Com-pass-es" that work similarly (even inside and in daytime).
-GiH
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, except that over that same time period, we'll be experiencing a reversal of the poles, and the accompaning period of magnetic flux that would make magnetic compasses rather useless.
Relativity Speaking (Score:5, Informative)
A solar mass is over 300,000 Earths, and Polaris is atleast 7 solar masses, adjusting for the most conservative of all estimates. It's apparent magnitude is about 1.9, while the magnitude of drop off (nolonger visible to the human eye) is defined at 7 (with 6 being relatively hard except under good conditions).
Setting aside the nuclear chemistry that will occur in the meantime (which tends to increase brightness), that Polaris is, in fact, multiple stars and the overall reduction of radiative and mass pressure that will be reducing the production/consumption rate*, I would posit even losing half of its mass, it would likely still be visible in 2000 years, which means the Northern Star will have since switched to Gamma Cephei.
So, no big loss here. Personally, I, for one, welcome our new Alrainian OverStar.
****
*You know what, I'm actually going to do these in the coming weeks. This is sound like a fun problem, even though I do a lot more in theoretical particle physics than cosmology.
Wait a minute... (Score:2)
Didn't I just say that?
Absolutely Not! (Score:2)
But I will accept useful supplements, such as this...for now...muah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
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They ll continue working after the polarity reversal. Just they wont at certain points during the reversal.
However, as the magnetic north pole isnt sitting on top of the rotation axis, it s still not the best method to find directions.
Luckily enough, chances are the north star doesnt fade before a few reversals have happened. And probably long after mankind has disapeared...
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The precession of the equinoxes and proper motion of stars means we'll have a new north star long before either happens. A series of them, actually.
Not that a pole star is actually necessary anyway. There isn't a decent south polar star currently. For actual navigation rather than just direction finding, it's only slightly easier to use Polaris rather than any other star, it requires a special table, and you need at least one other star for a fix anyway.
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The precession of the equinoxes and proper motion of stars means we'll have a new north star long before either happens. A series of them, actually.
Not that a pole star is actually necessary anyway. There isn't a decent south polar star currently.
The North Star is a fairly recent thing. Isaac Asimov used "Shakespeare" quoting Julius Caesar calling himself as constant as the North Star to "prove" that Francis Bacon couldn't have ghosted that play, at least, because Bacon would have known that, due to the precession of the equinoxes, in Roman times the nearest star to the pole spot covered half of the range from horizon to zenith each night, and thus would never be called "the North Star." Of course, Asimov then pointed out that that argument also p
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Either you or Asimov was exaggerating - at the time of Julius Caesar's death in 44 BC the nearest bright star to the pole was Kochab (at the time probably brighter than Polaris although it's a little fainter now). It was about 8 degrees away from the pole. That's a lot more than Polaris's current 0.5, but hardly half the horizon to zenith distance.
The pointer stars in the big dipper you're thinking of are Merak and Dubhe (Dubhe is also one of the common navigational stars). None of the stars in Cassiopei
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The precession of the equinoxes and proper motion of stars means we'll have a new north star long before either happens. A series of them, actually.
Not that a pole star is actually necessary anyway. There isn't a decent south polar star currently.
The North Star is a fairly recent thing. Isaac Asimov used "Shakespeare" quoting Julius Caesar calling himself as constant as the North Star to "prove" that Francis Bacon couldn't have ghosted that play, at least, because Bacon would have known that, due to the precession of the equinoxes, in Roman times the nearest star to the pole spot covered half of the range from horizon to zenith each night, and thus would never be called "the North Star." Of course, Asimov then pointed out that that argument also proved that he, Isaac Asimov, could not have written one of his juvenile books published under an alias, because of an equally simple mistake that surely a science writer as good as he was could never make (except that he did).
Anyway, if Polaris was eaten by an interstellar space goat sometime in the past so that its light disappears tomorrow, we can still use the method which has worked since the Neolithic. The two stars in the pan of the Big Dipper (aka, the Wain or Wagon in The Odyssey) farthest from the handle (or tongue of the Wagon) line up to point to the pole point more exactly than a fairly dim star in a fairly dim constellation ever have, and will continue to do so for thousands of years more. One can also use two stars in Cassiopia to line up with the pole, but I cannot remember which two without being outside on a clear night (and thus away from this keyboard and my wifi signal).
But wouldn't the movement that aligned (and will be removing) Polaris as the "North Star" also affect the alignment of both the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia?
I guess I'll go back to my GPS for direction finding and use my time instead to begin worrying about this interstellar space goat you've turned me onto...
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Informative)
The Earth precesses once ever 26000 years. In 13000 years north will be pointed towards Vega.
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Funny)
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I thought that was where the Mother Thing [wikipedia.org] was from? Doesn't sound like a ghetto... Wormface and company were from the ghetto.
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Funny)
Problem is, what comes from Vega are Vegans. If they invade, no more leather, no more steaks. We'll be reduced to eating vegetables and tofu forever and ever and ever, amen
Course, the upside is, we'll produce plenty of methane, so it might help with the energy crunch, though I kinda doubt it'll be comfortable walking around with a gas pipe up my ass. Maybe that's why the aliens are so into anal probing...
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Well played, sir.
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Thanks guys (and/or gals), I needed a laugh today. :)
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Wow, I only recently started delving into Sci-Fi stories. Never heard of this one but it sounds cool. Thanks for the post! (The most recent one I read is "
Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories About Robots and Computers" A pretty good collection.)
Have Space Suit—Will Travel is OK, but a bit strange, like many of Heinlein's novels. If you haven't read anything else by him I would rather recommend Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for starters.
I haven't read the collection you mention, but I have read about half of the stories therein, most are good ones. While I'm here I can give you some completely unsolicited pointers: Stephen Baxter (Evolution, and Manifold books, which explore fundamental concepts of physics and cosmology),
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Clarke's short stories should not be overlooked.
I particularly recommend "I Remember Babylon".
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I love "The City and the Stars". Short and one of his best works, IMO.
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Try Ken Macleod or Alister Renolds. Both are excelant authours. I like Ian M banks too. Asimov is cool too. Try Edgar Rice Buroughs if you want a taste of the past. John Carter of mars.
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The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) although I think it was renamed Tiger Tiger. There are lots to read. Some are shit. Many are good.
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It's a daunting amount of SF out there, and a lot of it is crap,
Would you say, perhaps, 90%? (aka, Sturgeon's Law, after famed SF writer Theodore Sturgeon who declared, on a talk show, that 90% of EVERYTHING is crap, after the other guest, an English professor, claimed that 90% of [then-]current [ie, late 50's] SciFi was crap)
Seriously, a lot of the crap can be good, too, if approached in the right mood. E. E. "Doc" Smith produced some utterly laughable crap that is fun to read, just as Plan 9 From Outer Space (generally acclaimed as the Worst Movie Ever) is fun to wat
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What happens at Vega stays at Vega.
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Informative)
You're right
Karma whoring:
"...Gamma Cephei (also known as Alrai, situated 45 light-years away) will become closer to the northern celestial pole than Polaris around AD 3000. Iota Cephei will become the pole star some time around AD 5200.
First-magnitude Deneb will be within 5 of the North Pole in AD 10000.
The brilliant Vega in the constellation Lyra is often touted as the best North Star (it fulfilled that role around 12000 BC and will do so again around the year AD 14000). However, it never comes closer than 5 to the pole.
When Polaris becomes the North Star again around 27800 AD, due to its proper motion it then will be farther away from the pole than it is now, while in 23600 BC it came closer to the pole.
In 3000 BC the faint star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the North Star. At magnitude 3.67 (fourth magnitude) it is only one-fifth as bright as Polaris, and today it is invisible in light-polluted urban skies..."
-Wikipedia
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also of interest is that Deneb is presently the North Pole star of Mars.
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The Earth precesses once ever 26000 years. In 13000 years north will be pointed towards Vega.
For fun I cranked up Stellarium to check the relative positions of Polaris and Vega. Does anyone know a way to make Stellarium draw a trail for stars like it does with planets? I turned up the time rate to whiz through thousands of years per second and can sort of make out the the path of Polaris with respect to the North pole due to precession, but it would be nice to have it trace out the path.
BTW, Stellarium stops at the year 99999. That seems like an odd limit.
Re:Oh my god! (Score:4, Funny)
ah, that's because when it clicks over to 100,000 the Morlocks invade...
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But Polaris is the BEST pole star! Of all the stars close to the polar precession circle, Polaris is the brightest star that is very close to the actual polar axis at the point of closest approach. There are only 4 or 5 naked eye stars that are closer to the precession circle, but they are a good bit dimmer than Polaris. The only one brighter is Vega, but it is never closer than about 5 degrees.
Polaris is currently getting closer and closer to the pole. It will reach its closest apparent declination on 24 M
Re:Oh my god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Polaris must be losing nearly the equivalent of Earth's mass—or a little under a millionth of its own mass—each year,
In a little over a million years, we won't be able to use that particular star to navigate any more. IT'LL BE CHAOS!
It's more likely to collapse and blow off gas in a nebula before then, but agree, it's very hard to use nebulas as navigational aids during the daylight hours and tricky enough at night.
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I call dibs on the world wide contract to fix the P1M bug. Don't wait till the last second, pay me now.
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So there's still a good reason to learn COBOL?
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Don't worry, in a couple thousand years we'll have a new north star.
Cough. Earth's Mass?!? (Score:2, Informative)
That's not exactly a lot. I'm sure our own dear Sun is losing that much mass every year and you still see 5 Billion on its birthday card.
Slow astrophysical news day, I guess.
Re:Cough. Earth's Mass?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Mass of the sun is 330,000 times the mass of earth.
So if it were losing an Earth-Mass yearly it would have had to be 7 times as massive as today at the beginning of the Pleistocene, and would only have a life expectancy of about 330,001 years left.
The Sun appears to have been active for 4.6 billion years and has enough fuel to go on for another Five billion years or so. [solarviews.com].
So I think you may have lost a few digits (in the exponents) when making your calculations.
Re:Cough. Earth's Mass?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Polaris is listed, at least in Wikipedia, at 7.54 solar masses. Also, it is a ternary system: one large star, a smaller star and a white dwarf.
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How is that germane to the GPs post?
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It goes to credibility, your honour. FFS, he presents facts and you jump on him whilst idiot anons get +whatever insightful/informative.
Go suck on a lemon, will ya?
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Among other things, it shows an explaination for the mass lossage. The mass might be feeding the smaller star or the white dwarf.
Ooh, if it's sending matter onto a white dwarf, we can hope to see an awesome Type 1a supernova in that part of the sky sooner or later.
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While that's true, it has no bearing on THIS particular sub-thread where the claim was made the OUR Sun was losing an Earth's Mass every year, when such could not be the case.
I don't deny the facts of the post, just the odd placement of the reply. I wonder if the post [slashdot.org] was misplaced?
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The star grows dimmer and brighter over a roughly 4-day cycle, and the team studied variation in the length of that cycle. ...
Even that 4-day pulsation isn't constant: In 1844, it was about 12 minutes slower than it is now.
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Oops .. clarifying: I was quoting the linked article.
Pivot point (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably losing all that mass due to heat from friction. It must be under tremendous pressure, seeing as how the entire night sky pivots on that single point. Long-term this will have huge consequences - when the North Star finally wears through completely the entire universe will ricochet off into nothingness like a spinning top.
Re:Pivot point (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably losing all that mass due to heat from friction. It must be under tremendous pressure, seeing as how the entire night sky pivots on that single point. Long-term this will have huge consequences - when the North Star finally wears through completely the entire universe will ricochet off into nothingness like a spinning top.
Not to worry. Once we get our booster technology straightened out, we can send up a big can of WD-40.
Re:Pivot point (Score:4, Funny)
Not to worry. Once we get our booster technology straightened out, we can send up a big can of WD-40.
That's the first lesson in any basic astrophysics maintenance course - always keep your turtles oiled.
Re:Pivot point (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget the turtle wax.
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You, Sir, belong in management.
Thank God! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Thank God! (Score:4, Funny)
Thank God its not shedding the amount of gas a politician evacuates each year. It would be barley visible.
I know right! And then wheat would we do?
Re:Thank God! (Score:4, Funny)
I apologise for that; I have a very rye sense of humour.
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Well, it's certanly corny....
Release the Chaff! (Score:4, Funny)
There's a grain (or at least a germ) of truth in each of those posts. Kind of a cereal furrow of truthiness, just plowing along, planting seeds of doubt, perhaps to just lie farro, but then again, maybe knot.
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Beer is sometimes referred to as liquid bread. This is good for me, because I have a sor ghum.
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I think you spelt it wrong.
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I think you spelt it wrong.
No, he spelled "it" correctly.
Thanks a lot "Name a star, buy a star" (Score:3)
After decades of overselling the North Star, is there any wonder there's so little of it left?
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After decades of overselling the North Star, is there any wonder there's so little of it left?
It'll be replaced by Mark Zuckerberg, so not to worry. He's a major star on Wall Street right now.
Damn... (Score:1)
that's going to suck when all our compasses stop working.
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Funny)
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Fucking magnets, so *that's* how they work!
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Still not clear on blankets, though. Those things are a magical fucking mystery.
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Blame it on Hard Sectoring (Score:2)
Does this mean victory for the Southern Cross? (Score:4, Funny)
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Nope! I was just wondering if somebody would make a Fist of the North Star joke and what it would be.
I was trying to come up with something, but wasn't getting any decent ideas.
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My hamster style will beat your.... ok, never mind. I was gonna go all Mormon on you, but thought better of it.
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lol
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No, my brain went to about the same place as yours. I was a bit surprised that no one joked about it sooner.
perhaps (Score:1)
Guess it is time to... (Score:1)
...make our own star in the sky.
But really, it could be done.
There is a semi-stable orbit up there that isn't too large that it couldn't replace it
All it needs to be is a huge lens and some magical arrangement of mirrors to allow pretty much omni-directional capture of sunlight with no moving parts, but semi-directional output down towards Earth.
You COULD have moving parts, but it would be more complicated than it need be. All it needs is some fuel and corrective orbit systems so it doesn't break away and
Losing gas? (Score:2)
Sounds like my Uncle Fred...
Easy fix: (Score:1)
just forward all AOL disks and discount mortgage mailers to it.
Don't worry (Score:3)
If Carlsberg made the obvious, news... (Score:2)
...then this would surely take the prize.
Stars convert matter to energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation as a result of nuclear fusion reactions in the core. Ergo, they shed mass - our own Sun sheds mass at the rate of some 4.2 million tonnes per second (citation [stanford.edu]). This converts to pure energy, incident at Earths equator at around 1000W/m^-2.
But don't worry, if the iron cycle weren't endothermic then the Sun would be good for another 600 billion years or so...
I am constant as the North Star! (Score:2)
Full of Gas and spewing on for years . . .
Explains so much about Star Trek VI
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Christ who? You mean the magical character with zero proof of existence in the work of historical fiction called the bible?
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There was a philosopher/political activist/very naughty boy with the same name who died around the same time. Perhaps you're talking at cross purposes?
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No there is a christion bible and I will not support it. You know it is total gibberish
Re:What does it mean for Christians? (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, Catholics don't speak for all Christianity, and their mythos is radically different from anyone elses. Most denominations that I know don't teach that the north star has any added significance.
Re:What does it mean for Christians? (Score:4, Informative)
Hrmm I'm Catholic and have a degree in theology. And this is the first time I've ever heard that the star of Bethlehem is supposed to be Polaris - it's certainly not part of the general 'mythos' as you put it
General teaching is that the Star of Bethlehem only hung around until not long after the Wise men left. And from a more scientific viewpoint if it's true then it was likely a supernova
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I've been to 3 separate universities where, in the restrooms in the science wings, above the toilet paper dispenser, was a note reading "theology degree. Please take one".
Some trivia about the "Star of Bethlehem" (Score:3)
There is some more interesting trivia about the "Star of Bethlehem" mythology.
1. The "Star of Bethlehem" was supposed to be in the east. We all know that the stars appear to move from the east to west through the night. Stars appearing in the north appear to circle around the north star. and really can't be describes as appearing in the east. How can it be that any star, except Polaris, can appear to be fixed in the sky?
2. According to legend, the magi were wise men that came from the orient, and follo
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Um no. The Christmas star was seen in the East, not the North. The North star has nothing to do with Christ. It never has.
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hang on, if the North Star was what was supposed to bring the wise men to the stable, then wouldn't they have come from the SOUTH, not the EAST??
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I was brought up Catholic and part of the mythos is that the north star was born when Christ was born.
Last I checked, the Vatican got out of the business of making physical predictions from religious belief. I doubt that is part of their orthodoxy even by error.
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Three men. Not three wise men. Because if you start out in Persia and follow the North star you're not going to end up in Judea any time soon.
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Funny, since Polaris wasn't the north star 2000 years ago. Perhaps you've been worshipping the wrong star all this time?
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It blew out a Flip Flop, stepped on a Pop Top.
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CSB: A pub I used to frequent had live entertainment in the form of a man on stage with a guitar singing various bawdy pub songs. A bunch of us were in one night when we convinced our friend ( a wonderful indian grad student who knew no fear) to get on stage and sing 'Margaritaville'. He didn'tt know the song, but the entertainer said he would feed him the lines as they came along just before along, like a human karaoke machine. So he get's up there and sings. The singer feeds him the line 'stepped on