Astronomers Detect a Bright-Blue Bridge of Stars, and It's About To Blow (livescience.com) 28
"Astrophysicists have found a new region of the Milky Way, and it's filled with searingly hot, bright-blue stars that are about to explode," writes Live Science (in a report shared by long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot):
The researchers were creating the most detailed map yet of the star-flecked spiral arms of our galactic neighborhood with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia telescope when they discovered the region, which they have named the Cepheus spur, they reported in a new study.
Nestled between the Orion Arm — where our solar system is — and the constellation Perseus, the spur is a belt between two spiral arms filled with enormous stars three times the size of the sun and colored blue by their blistering heat. Astronomers call these giant, blue stars OB stars due to the predominantly blue wavelengths of light that they emit. They are the rarest, hottest, shortest-living and largest stars in the entire galaxy. The violent nuclear reactions taking place inside their hearts make them six times hotter than the sun. And the enormous stellar explosions that end their lives — called supernovas — scatter the heavy elements essential for complex life far into the galaxy.
"OB stars are rare, in a Galaxy of 400 billion stars there might be less than 200,000," study co-author Michelangelo Pantaleoni González, a researcher at the Spanish Astrobiology Center (CAB), told Live Science.
Nestled between the Orion Arm — where our solar system is — and the constellation Perseus, the spur is a belt between two spiral arms filled with enormous stars three times the size of the sun and colored blue by their blistering heat. Astronomers call these giant, blue stars OB stars due to the predominantly blue wavelengths of light that they emit. They are the rarest, hottest, shortest-living and largest stars in the entire galaxy. The violent nuclear reactions taking place inside their hearts make them six times hotter than the sun. And the enormous stellar explosions that end their lives — called supernovas — scatter the heavy elements essential for complex life far into the galaxy.
"OB stars are rare, in a Galaxy of 400 billion stars there might be less than 200,000," study co-author Michelangelo Pantaleoni González, a researcher at the Spanish Astrobiology Center (CAB), told Live Science.
Visualization? (Score:1)
How soon before we can see this visualized in 3d?
Before it happens (Score:2)
Bra and panty sets (Score:1, Funny)
Why are so many slashdot ads for bra and a panty sets? How bizarre. Sure I like to cross dress but how many sets does a man need?
Re: Bra and panty sets (Score:2)
The beast of Google is tracking you and knows you...
Re: (Score:2)
You look really nice in the light purple ones.
"about" to explode (Score:4, Insightful)
O stars live 3-10 million years, very short in stellar terms. But "about" is probably not in our own lifetimes.
Re: (Score:3)
OTOH, if there are lots of them, the odds of at least one exploding is a lot higher. If there are a million of them, that trims the estimate to 3 years to a decade. (Well, unless they're all the same age or something. Not impossible, but it doesn't sound like they're talking about a dense cluster, so quite unlikely.)
Re: (Score:2)
How far away? (Score:3, Interesting)
Too lazy to dig through TFA for the info.
And what will the consequences be for life on this planet when they blow and we are bathed in the resulting cosmic ray pulse? If these stars are concentrated in a (relatively) small region, can the shock wave of one going supernova trigger nearby stars to do so as well?
âoeAbout toâ (Score:2)
Yea, in astrophysics that means it could happen anywhere from tomorrow to a mere 100 million years from now.
About to... (Score:2)
If it's far enough away, it probally already happened and we are just waiting for the light to get here so we can see it.
Looking into deep space is looking back in time due to how long it takes for light to travel such distances.
Re: About to... (Score:2)
Remember, if we are seeing something a million light years from Earth, we are seeing it how it was a million years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is rather inconsequential (other than maybe measuring the time of BigBang). Simultanity is ... relative.
Re: (Score:2)
The story indicates this region is somewhere around half-way ish between Earth and the Persues spur, which is some 6400 light years distant - so now where looking at around 3000 light years from Earth.
What I want to know is how there's all these short lived stars (few to a dozen or so million year lifespan) in a universe 13+ billion years old.
It is heartening to think there are still massive regions where stars
Re: About to... (Score:2)
I find it to be a relief that the 'heat death' of the universe probally won't happen within my lifetime.
3 times larger than our sun? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the article means "30X" not "3X". Typo? There are B stars and O stars. These are indeed blue but among B and O stars they can range from 3X to 90X the mass of our sun and any O or B star that is "six times hotter" than our sun should be more than 10X the mass of our sun.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they are not referring to the mass of the stars, but the radius.
I wouldn't call a star that was 3 solar masses enormous.
Re: (Score:1)
I'd go as far as saying both TFS and TFA are incorrect in the classification. There are no "OB" type stars. There are OB associations, however, which is consistent with what has been observed.
This would also explain the not particularly but reported as such "massive" stars that are only three stellar masses as the temperatures are a conflation of O and B, with the sixfold discrepancy being provided by the O types n close proximity.
Re: (Score:2)
I also don't know what it means to be between the Orion arm (of the galaxy) and the Perseus constellation. A constellation is a random set of stars at varying distances, which happen to be visually prominent from our location. I'm pretty sure they instead mean the Perseus arm.
It all sounds a bit sensationalist (Score:1)
It all sounds a bit sensationalist, really its about to blow? these guys couldn't predict Bill Hwang was going to lose $20 Billion in 2 days, yet they can predict a distant galaxy is about to blow.
James Doohan lives among the stars (Score:1)
"She's about to blow, coptain!"
Enormous = 3x sun? (Score:2)
If you think that a star 3x the mass or the size of the sun is "enormous", you know nothing about astronomy.
Are there UV stars? (Score:3)
https://encyclopedia2.thefreed... [thefreedictionary.com]
Do UV stars also explode sooner?