'Green' Galaxy Recycles Gas, Supercharges Star Birth 36
astroengine writes "In a galaxy, far, far away (6 billion light-years away to be precise), the most efficient star 'factory' has been discovered. Called SDSSJ1506+54, this galaxy generates a huge quantity of infrared radiation, the majority being generated by a compact region at its core. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer first spotted the galactic oddity and Hubble confirmed the maelstrom of stellar birthing near its core. But the most amazing thing? This galaxy is the 'greenest' factory yet discovered — it uses 100 percent of all the available hydrogen to supply the protostars, leaving no waste. 'This galaxy is remarkably efficient,' said lead scientist Jim Geach of McGill University in a NASA news release. 'It's converting its gas supply into new stars at the maximum rate thought possible.'"
Re:100% efficiency ? (Score:4, Funny)
When I read the "100%" I had to go to TFA and read the whole thing ...
The Nasa article ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-144 [nasa.gov] ) says " ... with almost 100-percent efficiency " but the submit uses the hyperbole "... it uses 100 percent of all the available hydrogen to supply the protostars, leaving no waste ."
Imagine if it were as efficient as Slashdot:
The SlashStar Galaxy would recycle things so efficiently that it wouldn't need to produce any light of its own -- feeding only from the energy of other nearby systems. It would sometimes appear to have two of the same starticles in the same region, not due to gravitational lensing, but due to not caring enough about how it looks enough to even notice it had already processed the same material earlier. Every entity responsible for the formation of the SlashStar Galaxy itself would be either an invisible blacktroll of negativity or a nebulous "dark matter" hidden in its shadowy basements. Any direct observation would be near worthless without extensive research to discern what the measurements actually meant, but spending time on such a thing would be frowned upon -- Merely seeing what system it passed in front of next being the prime interest of the scientific community. Though you could not observe the individual components that make up the SlashStar Galaxy, you could measure their collective effect on their surroundings: Occasionally the maelstrom of minutia would align in a catastrophic conjunction causing a great funnel of forces that eject great streams of individual energetic particles, obliterating any unfortunate system in its path -- The SlashStar effect.
The SlashStar Galaxy: Dark energy from Nerds, Stuff made of strange matter.
Precise? (Score:5, Funny)
Just how precise are we talking here, 6 billion sounds like a really round number.