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lochieAug 18, 2010
Will this help make Pluto a planet again?
kakemonstereAug 18, 2010
Pluto will always be a planet to me =(
mweatherAug 18, 2010
What about Eris? It's bigger than Pluto.
thcobbsAug 18, 2010
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
if you repeat it enough, it becomes true, right?
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
PLUTO IS A PLANET!Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
lochieAug 18, 2010
That read was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be.
amirbdAug 18, 2010
"Magnetar" has got to be the coolest name for anything, ever.
brokenvisageAug 18, 2010
I choose him!
dougm68Aug 18, 2010
I guess you've never watched X-Men.
That's Magneto's home planet. He came here on a starship after his planet was destroyed by the Red Sun of Magton.
dougm68Aug 18, 2010
I guess you've never watched X-Men.
That's Magneto's home planet. He came here on a starship after his planet was destroyed by the Red Sun of Magton.
bdog2g2Aug 18, 2010
You hit the grounding running with that one huh?
avianeddyAug 18, 2010
Magnetar was the name given to a financial corporation that pretty much ran our economy to near depression two years ago.
Sad to say, but the Wall St assh**es took that name and made it s**t.
:(
cooldude777Aug 18, 2010
Not as cool as "Wyld Stallyns"
eurynom0sAug 18, 2010
EXCELLENT
marktasticAug 18, 2010
Be excellent to each other.
maxxellAug 18, 2010
What was solved? This is interesting because it defies conventional theory.
bdog2g2Aug 18, 2010
Often times, in science, solutions produce more questions than they answer.
maxxellAug 18, 2010
That's deep, man. But still, this discovery didn't solve anything.
maverick15926Aug 18, 2010
maxxell is completely correct in his assessment of the article title. I thought the exact same thing. The article's only hypothesis about how a massive star does not become a black hole is it lost mass before the super nova. In this case black holes still behave as we all expect.... no mystery solved there. If the mass loss of the star can be questioned, then a new mystery has been created... not solved. maxxell could not be more correct.
maverick15926Aug 18, 2010
Article fail. Nothing in there talks about how the magnetar solves any black hole mystery. The mystery was why such a massive star didn't form a black hole. The answer was it lost mass. ??? What is the mystery solved?
michichaelAug 18, 2010
The understanding is that any star over 25 times larger than our sun, under current black hole theory, should collapse into a black hole if they are gravitationally based. This star is estimated to being over 40 times larger, and even if it lost mass it should have still formed a black hole, under that theory.
This behavior is consistent with my theory of black hole formation, which is less dependent on mass and more dependent on the core temperature. I, and an increasing number of physicists, believe that the determination of whether a black hole will form or not is based on whether the center of the star (and there are varying theories on what defines the "center") reaches such a level of energy that it attains singularity.
My personal theory is based on entropy, specifically modeling the universe as a bound system. Half of this has already been scientifically proven with absolute zero, or the lower bound. I theorize that there is no half-bound system, there must be an upper bound. The amount of energy applied to a particle increases its temperature through kinetic transference and other well understood principals. In a significantly massive star, as demonstrated, the super-nova reaction, I theorize, could provide the energy and pressure required to push the core molecules or atoms near or at the center of the star to not only fuse them into ultra-heavy atoms, but to further push them beyond that theoretical upper bound.
When I can eventually afford to pursue my masters/doctoral in physics, (Winning the lottery maybe...) I'll try to establish what that upper threshold is.
This "magnetar", under my theory, is perfectly possible - as the formation of a black hole isn't contingent on mass, it's dependent on additional variables such as the stability and focus of the nova's central energy. If the star was rotating extremely fast or being affected by a binary system that diffuses the energy, this type of star would form instead of a black hole.
But hey, it's not like I know what I'm talking about or anything - I don't have that piece of paper that says I had hundreds of thousands of dollars to waste. :)
maverick15926Aug 18, 2010
So that's great. Interesting hypothesis... and if it turned out that the formation of a black hole had more to do with core temp than mass (and the article had mentioned it), then indeed an interesting question would have been solved (how a massive star did not collapse into a black hole).
However, the article doesn't mention your hypothesis or address why the star didn't collapse into a black hole except to say it must have lost mass. Therefore, no new insights into black hole formation are explained.
The article title is still a complete failure.
michichaelAug 18, 2010
I agree entirely that the article is a complete failure. But I can see the point they were clumsily trying to make: That the magnetar is still of such a mass that it should have formed a black hole anyway - despite losing mass. The question is why a loss of mass that isn't enough to drop it below the black hole threshold (25 suns) resulted in anything BUT a black hole. They can't rationalize it, hence the new questions are formed - the magnetar is greater than 25 suns in mass, so should be a black hole when it collapsed.
The article is very poorly written.
cooldude777Aug 18, 2010
Buried for theories based on little data.
r0g3rAug 18, 2010
Buried for commenting on astrophysics when you know jack s**t about it.
cooldude777Aug 18, 2010
I would disagree, and I actually know quite a bit. AND I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. So there you go.
Their theory is based on measurements from one magnetar, which itself did not match much more established theories.
curunirAug 18, 2010
These comments suck.
infinitewithinAug 18, 2010
Old.
worsel55Aug 18, 2010
In 2003 I wrote a paper about the possibility of Magnetars for my Astrophysics class. My prof. gave me a C on the paper claiming that they were improbable... I am laughing now.
justlorenAug 18, 2010
You need to re-email that paper to your prof and ask for another review :p
Closed AccountAug 18, 2010
Soo, now we know black holes can possibly be "flung" from the center of the galaxy when two smaller ones collide. Plus their black and hard to see so it's pretty easy to be blind-sided by a run away black hole. Awesome...
r0g3rAug 18, 2010
Dugg for magnetars...
jamaphAug 19, 2010
FTA: "One way of achieving this "diet plan" would be if the progenitor was part of cosmic double-act known as a "binary star", and its companion pulled off some of its mass, Dr Clark, another co-author, told the BBC. This would have allowed it to avoid the fate of becoming a black hole."
This is awesome.
pimpdawgAug 19, 2010
Captains log. Stardate 30620.1. We are investigating a magnetar in the starcluster Westerlund 1. I suspect this will be a routine stop with no strange mutations, time warps, borg encounters, ironic plot twists, or invention of a holodeck nemesis. No wait...
freckleearsAug 19, 2010
Here is another idea. Maybe they got the mass wrong or maybe the mass has nothing to do with it.
As soon as scientists discovered that the mass of the universe was nowhere near what was needed to hold it together based on their mathematical model, they lost credibility in continuing the idea that mass is key. In ANY other discipline of science, when your theories are continually challenged and you cannot come up with any conclusions, chances are your idea is wrong.
The only thing we know about neutron stars/pulsars/magnetars are that they emit high end electromagnetic waves. Everything else about them is just theory with mathematical equations. Lab studies by nuclear physicists show that neutrons cannot exist by themselves, cannot pack that dense, and do not have the nuclear force of attraction to other particles. A neutron star, by study cannot exist, yet people still cling to that idea. Remember that a Magnetar is a neutron with low rotational velocity. That in itself defies Newtons laws. You must conserve momentum and an object with even a tiny rate of rotation that shrinks in size 5-10 orders of magnitude would be rotating rapidly. If the earth were artificially collapsed to 6 km, it would rotate around 13 times a second. That is a tiny ass planet with a normal rotational period. Our sun rotates with a surface velocity of 1km/s. If that collapsed to 7km in diameter, it would rotate about 500 times a second.
Relativity is becoming a religion with people just agreeing with whatever is published. You cannot agree with a theory when it is only comprised of mathematical models. At some point, you are going to need results from tests.
prufrockerAug 19, 2010
That's interesting, especially considering magnetars were first detected in 1979, their theory of creation delivered in 1992, and several discovered and recorded prior to 2003. Either your prof was grossly out of touch or your story has some black holes of its own.
oilcanAug 21, 2010
i like how this says 'mystery solved', then when you read it you find it is merely conjecture to explain why it doesn't fit their models, which are conjecture to begin with. cosmology you so crazy