NASA Finds Star With a Tail 233
Andrew Stellman writes "NASA astronomers held a press conference announcing that a new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star named Mira that's leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that's 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old. The website has images and a replay of the teleconference."
Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Funny)
I think it started with the urge to deny the existance of Kirk-Spock sexual tension...
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Informative)
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cheers.
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:4, Informative)
Kirk's Bedpost Notches [memory-alpha.org]
In my defense, there were a couple that even I couldn't remember.
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*Editor's note: The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term t'hy'la, which can also mean brother and lover. Spock's recollection (from which this chapter has drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However, because t'hy'la can be used to mean lover, and since Kirk's and Spock's friendship was unusually close, this has l
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Funny)
>I think it started with the urge to deny the existance of Kirk-Spock sexual tension...
What sexual tension? [youtube.com]
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As if anyone could deny it! This episode [boingboing.net] resolved the ambiguity at last.
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It's subtle, but there. In one case, he's trying to seduce a woman to regain control of the ship. They start to kiss. And there's a commercial break. When it resumes from the break, she is fixing her hair and he is sitting on the bed putting his boots back on.
Clearly, something happened during the commercial. Sadly, it wasn't until I was 23 that I actually got to experience the ins and o
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I've no idea where the Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started.
You must be new, that's how things were filmed then. The first ever inter-racial (ie black-white) kiss was on classic Star Trek.
Roddenberry deliberately pushed the envelope whereever he could. Sulu, Chekov on the bridge, etc. The only way a woman could get on was to be married or be mistress to him - Nurse Chapel was his wife, Uhura was his mistress and so was the (can't remember her name and my own videos of the classic series are not handy) blonde babe ensign who was in Charley, etc.
Type M-x praise-b
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Forgive me, the joke is obvious, but it had to be made
Re:NAME IT SKYWALKER AND STOP BEING AN ASSFAGGOT (Score:5, Funny)
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Live long and prosper.
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It must really suck to only be known by your Borg designation.
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Collision Course (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Collision Course (Score:5, Funny)
Campbell or Willis?
I'd prefer the former; it would be... groovy.
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You aught to be ashamed,
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"THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK!" and other really bad jokes.
some of the wierder slashdotters though of his current oldspice commercial.
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The NASA folks must have been watching bad films (Score:4, Funny)
They should tell us how many parsecs it could do the Kessel run in.
Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film (Score:2)
Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film (Score:2)
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Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film (Score:5, Informative)
According to the script, they (Lucas) knew it and knew Solo was wrong. From http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/anh-script.shtm
HAN: Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
BEN: Should I have?
HAN: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve
parsecs!
Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with
obvious misinformation.
Emphasis added...
-Trillian
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The "Kessel Run" could be a timed race. Similar to a 0-60 measure. Everybody who does a Kessel Run drives for say, 10 minutes. The further you've gone in that time, the faster the ship you have
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Mind you, Star Wars is so full of revisionism that all the stuff you "know" has been changed a million times. Like
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It does make a pretty good "backsplanation", though, you've got to admit.
Kessel Run [wikipedia.org]
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They should tell us how many parsecs it could do the Kessel run in.
A parsec is a measure of distance... and the Kessel Run is a measure of distance (18 parsecs). So we're measuring how far we can travel in... a given distance?
I don't even want to think about the equations required to move in 3D^2 space. Must be some kind of wormhole involved in there somewhere.
Correction - 4D^2 space. We still include time where or not we're measuring it. Good luck sleeping tonight!
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessel_Run#Kessel_Run [wikipedia.org]
NASA discovers G-class star 8 light minutes away (Score:4, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira [wikipedia.org]
Re:NASA discovers G-class star 8 light minutes awa (Score:2)
It probably has the largest apparent size (angular diameter) of any star except the sun, but it isn't "one of t
Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:5, Insightful)
For comparison, a "speeding bullet" slugs anywhere from around 1km/s (sniper rifle) to ~100m/s (short-barrel pistol).
In addition, Wikipedia states that Mira's velocity is 63.8km/s -- which is actually slower than our own's sun (which has no "tail"), leading to two conclusions: (1) Mira's tail is caused by some other factor than it's velocity alone, and (2) Mira's speed is also so faster than a "speeding bullet" beyond comparison. In other words, the comparison is not just off-scale but also irrelevant.
If you insist on using laymen's "cool-sounding" metaphors to describe scientific phenomena, at least check your facts and context, or you will just make a moron out of yourself.
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Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:5, Funny)
Is it more powerful than a locomotive?
Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:5, Funny)
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1 light year = 9.4605284 × 10^15 meters.
so 103461596675415.57305336832895888, or one hundred three trillion, four hundred sixty-one billion, five hundred ninety-six million, six hundred seventy-five thousand, four hundred fifteen-ish football fields per light year.
which makes 13 light years 1345000756780402.4496937882764654, or one quadrillion, three hundred forty-five trillion, seven hundred fifty-six million, seven hundred eighty
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For Soccer Fields:
Fifa approvable fields must be between 100m and 110m in length.
so from 1229868692000000 to 1118062447272727.27, or one quadrillion, two hundred twenty-nine trillion, eight hundred sixty-eight billion, six hundred ninety-two million to one quadrillion, one hundred eighteen trillion, sixty-two billion, four hundred forty-seven million, two hundred seventy-two thousand, seven hundred twenty-seven fifa approved soccer fields.
reaalllly slow
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I'll hand in my nitpickers card at the door =(
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Also note that NASA used the term supersonic.
Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:4, Informative)
You know the speed that pressure changes can propogate through a fluid (such as the not-quite-vacuum intertelar medium around the star). That speed in which there's a change in the physics due to the formation of a shock wave (because the object is traveling faster than the pressure shift that "tells" the "upstream" fluid that the object is there).
100km/s or there abouts - depends on the local density of the interstellar medium.
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I'd never dream of annoying people, I'm so deeply sorry for my tone. Please forgive and be my friend?
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Cheers!
That's actually a snail trail (Score:2)
Waddaya mean no tail? (Score:2)
Of course our sun has a tail. It's moving and ejecting matter. It has to have a tail.
More powerful than a Wikipedia entry (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm, I guess I better edit the article on stadiums so that they can accommodate solar-massed objects while I'm at it.
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The ultraviolet image shows a gigantic shock wave, called a bow shock, in front of the star, and an enormous, 13-light-year-long trail of turbulence in its wake.
Further they note that this effect is much like the supesonic shock wave and the turbulent tail created by a bullet. The appropriate image is also available at the NASA site. I couldn't find a statement that it's fast as a bullet [which, as the parent rightfully shows, would be ridiculous].
How do we know this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that with Hubble we can only see "3 or 4 pixels" worth of Pluto (according to the last episode of Universe on the History channel), how do we know what debris we may or may not be leaving behind our solar system as we move through space?
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So as an analogy, in the relative vacuum of space, the former is true, and gravity can provide some measure of drag, even on a passing star. Assuming that those rules apply, could this star be decellarated, perhaps by gravitational pulls from neighboring stars, and/or dark matter? Another possibility is that the star also has a slower than normal rotation, so as it pokes along at a slower speed, it occasionally outgass
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Well, either, Wikipedia is wrong, or the guys at Galex, who actually did the work, are wrong, as they say [caltech.edu] Mira is traveling at approximately "130 kilometers per second" relative to the gas it's traveling through. And that, combined with Mira shedding it's outer layers as it expands and contracts, is why it has a tail.
As for Sol, the reason it doesn't have a tail is:
1) Unlike Mira, it's not a red giant sloughing off it's outer shell, and
2) Sol
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Someone already did it
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The even sadder thing is that I don't think it's the NASA guys that are this dumb, but rather the target audience that NASA expects. To the general population, bullet-fast, sound-fast, planet orbit-fast and light-fast, all amount to one thing, "really fast". Give them a number and they won't know what to do with it, but throw a completely off-the-wall metaphor, and they'll think "wow this is cool".
Gotta make the bu
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For all I know, the speed of sound in a medium increases with a medium's density. Pure vacuum transmits no sound at all. The speed of sound in water is much faster than that in the air.
Note that I'm referring to -sound- specifically, rather than any other form of transmitted waves (subatomic radiation, whether beta or gamma, for example stellar pulses, and the like, are not "sound" in their own right, ev
Am I the only one... (Score:3)
God says this is Impossible (Score:2, Funny)
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That's easy (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I'm an atheist myself, but I just can't see anyone's true faith stumbling upon that one. If people can believe that God put dinosaur bones there to test you, why would their mental defenses be shattered by something like this?
And if you think scientific units and measurements put those kinds of beliefs to rest... let's just say that there are thos
That's Funny ... Stellarium (Score:3, Funny)
You can't see the tail with your eyes (Score:4, Informative)
Read the article, bottom of the page: "Mira's tail is only visible in ultraviolet light, and does not show up in visible light."
Re:You can't see the tail with your eyes (Score:5, Funny)
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Relative to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Relative to what? (Score:5, Funny)
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Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, relative to what object?
Actually the speed (relative to anything) is irrelevant. A moving object will leave a tail in two scenarios:
1) It's moving quickly relative to its medium (ie a wake left by a ship through water). Now there's no such thing as the ether but presumably there could be some magnetic or gravitational factor (a nearby black hole) that's stripping away material, maybe even some weird property of the solar system is causing it to spew out material in that direction.
2) The star is accelerating and leaving bits behin
Oh, neat, you can see the bow shock (Score:3, Interesting)
Well damn, now we know where we stand in the... (Score:2)
from another recent
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26956
The song remains the same (Score:5, Funny)
Flying at supersonic speeds
Though sound cannot propagate through a vacuum
Tail lightyears long through outer space
We know TFA will get the science wrong uh huh
And the dupe will posted in a week uh huh
But how long in football fields? (Score:2, Funny)
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Scientist as Educator (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA as presented on MSNBC: "If Neanderthal man had ultraviolet eyes and could look above the atmosphere, he could have seen the beginning of this tail forming," study leader Chris Martin, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, said during a teleconference Wednesday.
AWEsome, d00d.
And, if they had ultraviolet eyes on 30,000 light year long eye stalks, they could not only see
above the atmosphere, they could see the tail as it formed, RIGHT WHERE IT WAS HAPPENING.
OH. OH. And if the DINOSAURS had ultraviolet eyes, and could see above the atmosphere, they could see it 65 million years BEFORE it happened. And they could probably also see that asteroid coming and build SPACESHIPS, no wait, SPACE DINOSAUR MOTORCYCLES, they could get off the planet before it got hit, and fly to that star and live there, and then 65 million years later all wag their tails at the same time and make the star shoot off gas and dust like a BIG TAIL that we could see, because they wanted to say hi and let us know they were all OK and we shouldn't be all sad because we thought they all got extincted.
I guess we can't all be Carl Sagan. Because then there would be BIL..... nevermind.
Isn't the star's speed irrelevant? (Score:2)
Broadcast quality video (Score:3, Interesting)
Pathfire was bought out by DG Fast Channel in June. It seems they sell servers maybe and services too. It looks like what people call video press releases.
Anyway is this a commercial service only open to news agencies? Anybody know?
It doesn't make any sense, NASA should just dump it all onto a torrent so it can be watched with one of the new torrent film players that advertise open video, like Zudeo or Miro. I spent so much time once upon a time with CU-SeeMe to see NASA live video, and more recently saw interesting science discussions, but they really have very high quality television broadcast quality film they sell. Maybe HD too.
Wouldn't it make more sense, in terms of saving money and making it more accessible, to just host a torrent? Certainly this DG feed is a hose into TV stations where they can patch in some shots if they want some filler, but to degrade NASA into that kind of video press release is just so bizarre! If anyone knows how to get this high quality video I'd like to see it. NASA needs to get with the times.
Faster than a speeding bullet ... (Score:2)
So, in astronomical terms, it's still moving at snail's pace ?
This sounds good, but... (Score:3, Funny)
rhY
Curved tail? (Score:2)
Star WIth a Tail? (Score:2)
What Causes "Solar Turbulance"? (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems really wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that's 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old.
Hrrrmmm. OK. So, a light year is about 5,879,000,000,000 miles. [wikipedia.org]
So, 13 light years would be 76,427,000,000,000 miles.
Now divide that by 30,000 years and we get 2,547,566,666.667 miles. now there are 8,760 hours in a year, so if we divide 2,547,566,666.667 by 8,760, we get 290,818.113 miles per hour. Now, that IS fast, especially given the average asteroid skips along at 40,000 mph. But it's not THAT fast - it would take that star an hour to go from here to the moon. If it did it in 5 minutes - yeah, that's fast. But an hour? Heck - our feeble crappy spacecraft get there in a few days...
RS
The story on Nature.com (Score:3, Informative)
So Omikron Ceti should be renamed.. (Score:2)
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Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No, it's Superstar!
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Rides the Metal Monster? Not so much.
Breathing Smoke and Fire? Check.
Louder than an Atom Bomb? Based on Proximity. But we'll let this go with a check.
Chromium Plated boiling metal? Not so much.
Brighter than a 1,000 suns? Not quite.
Well, it's got some close characteristics.
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An object 400 times the radius of the sun, known as a star for at least 400 years, in a binary relationship with a smaller star can not be a "large, slow-moving comet". Please refer to these links before posting any further on this subject: Mira [wikipedia.org] Comet [wikipedia.org]
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Granted. However, this being a comet is out of the realm of possibility, which you would have known had you done even the most cursory research into either Mira or, for that matter, comets.
Had you posted that Mira was a Dyson Sphere, you would have been equally ridiculed as it flies in the face of both the observed facts and the notion of what a Dyson Sphere is, in precisely the way your original comment flies i