Bizarre Star Could Host a Neutron Star In Its Core

ananyo writes "Astronomers say that they have discovered the first example of a long-sought cosmic oddity: a bloated, dying star with a surprise in its core — an ultradense neutron star. Such entities, known as Thorne-Zytkow objects, are theoretically possible but would alter scientists' understanding of how stars can be powered. Since Thorne-Zytkow objects were first proposed in 1975, researchers have occasionally offered up candidates, but none have been confirmed."

Re:and at school I was forced to believe scientist

[Anonymous Coward]

You really want to compare theoretical physics with your inability to figure out what happens when the spring carts bounce off each other on the air track?

Though now if we may stop being facetious, people do need to be prepared for when this idiotic argument is presented in all seriousness. And the answer is simply that uncovering explanations for a new region does not invalidate explanations that were valid in the old region. Not only that, any new theory claiming to be valid over a larger region must reduce to the (presumably simpler) expressions that describe smaller regions: General Relativity reduces to Newtonian gravity in the weak-field limit, quantum mechanics reduces to classical mechanics in the large scale/high temperature limit, particle dynamics reduces to fluid mechanics in the large-scale limit, quantum field theory reduces to Schrodinger's Equation, etc.