Star Within a Star: Thorne-Zytkow Object Discovered 89
astroengine writes: "A weird type of 'hybrid' star has been discovered nearly 40 years since it was first theorized — but until now has been curiously difficult to find. In 1975, renowned astrophysicists Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif., and Anna Zytkow, of the University of Cambridge, UK, assembled a theory on how a large dying star could swallow its neutron star binary partner, thus becoming a very rare type of stellar hybrid, nicknamed a Thorne-Zytkow object (or TZO). The neutron star — a dense husk of degenerate matter that was once a massive star long since gone supernova — would spiral into the red supergiant's core, interrupting normal fusion processes. According to the Thorne-Zytkow theory, after the two objects have merged, an excess of the elements rubidium, lithium and molybdenum will be generated by the hybrid. So astronomers have been on the lookout for stars in our galaxy, which is thought to contain only a few dozen of these objects at any one time, with this specific chemical signature in their atmospheres. Now, according to Emily Levesque of the University of Colorado Boulder and her team, a bona fide TZO has been discovered and their findings have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters."
Re:Fucking ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads? What ads?
-- Happy AdBlock Plus user.
Did they try putting an ad within an ad on this article about a star within a star?
Re:Fucking ads (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to think adblock was unnecessary back when google was doing the whole "unobtrusive text ad" thing, and I saw a future with hope for ads being reasonable things. But it's been years since that was worth worrying about.
Marketers haven't learned that their obnoxiousness is a tragedy of the commons thing, and upping that factor to compete just quietly hurts the marketplace as a whole.
Our Universe is Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
A place so big and fantastic where anything that is theoretically possible has probably happened hundreds or thousands, if not millions, of times.
Re:within? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fucking ads (Score:2, Insightful)
I use ABP regularly - I didn't even realise that ads were used on slashdot