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Space Science

Star Blows Bubble 7

Posted by michael from the man-bites-dog dept.
mackga writes: "Yahoo has this story about a spherical bubble, as large as a solar system, being ejected from a forming star."
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Star Blows Bubble More

Star Blows Bubble

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  • that's a whole lotta soap!
  • Could it be possible for organic material to exist long enough in one of these 'jets' to form rudimentary lifeforms?

    Where are the pics?

    Dancin Santa
  • The space.com [space.com] report gives much more information.
  • Just finished reading it in more detail. The bubble is not "made of water molecules", as Yahoo reports. It's largely hydrogen (which makes much more sense), with small amounts of water and other chemicals. It's just that the water was what they first detected. Also, it's not definitely a sphere. They just happen to see an arc instead of a jet, and the arc seems to fit a circle fairly well.
  • Don't rely on Yahoo to get anything technical in some sort of accurate or approximatingly close format. I'll read about it in Astronomy magazine, which I highly recommend.
  • The density of the matter in gas jets is very low. It's a vapor, not a fluid. Rudimentary lifeforms would require many orders of magnitude more density in order to coalesce molecules of more than a few atoms each.

    And it's mostly hydrogen and water. No mention of carbon or silicon or sulphur other biological atoms. Which doesn't mean they're absent, just that they're not abundant. But maybe you're thinking of the possibility of a carbon blob being spit out from a star...maybe...

    Also, jets don't stay in one place too long. This spherical one is said to be only 33 years old at the time we're seeing it, delayed by 2400 light years. And it's expanding outward. Neither 33 nor even 2400 years is enough time for life to evolve from star-stuff.

    You need planets for that.

    The space.com article called it a "burp", but it seems like more of a "hiccup". The normal jet-like jets seem more like a burp.

    --Blair
  • Are you trying to tell us they're just yahoos?

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