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from the round-round-get-around-I-get-around dept.
Astronomers have measured the roundest known natural object to date using Kepler star oscillation data:
Stars are not perfect spheres. While they rotate, they become flat due to the centrifugal force. A team of researchers around Laurent Gizon from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen has now succeeded in measuring the oblateness of a slowly rotating star with unprecedented precision. The researchers have determined stellar oblateness using asteroseismology – the study of the oscillations of stars. The technique is applied to a star 5000 light years away from Earth and revealed that the difference between the equatorial and polar radii of the star is only 3 kilometers – a number that is astonishing small compared to the star's mean radius of 1.5 million kilometers; which means that the gas sphere is astonishingly round.
[...] Gizon and his colleagues selected [Kepler 11145123] to study because it supports purely sinusoidal oscillations. The periodic expansions and contractions of the star can be detected in the fluctuations in brightness of the star. NASA's Kepler mission observed the star's oscillations continuously for more than four years. Different modes of oscillation are sensitive to different stellar latitudes. For their study, the authors compare the frequencies of the modes of oscillation that are more sensitive to the low-latitude regions and the frequencies of the modes that are more sensitive to higher latitudes. This comparison shows that the difference in radius between the equator and the poles is only 3 km with a precision of 1 km. "This makes Kepler 11145123 the roundest natural object ever measured, even more round than the Sun" explains Gizon.
Shape of a slowly rotating star measured by asteroseismology (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601777) (DX)
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:02AM
TFA says "the roundest object ever observed in nature", which is a little better. Stars can be observed directly, while electrons require a little more creativity to "look at".
(Score: 2) by dlb on Saturday November 19 2016, @05:15AM
Granted my understanding of quantum mechanics is limited, but to me the quantum fuzziness of an electron's boundary makes it sound strange to speak of it having a shape. In fact I wonder if a philosophical argument couldn't be made that the electron is more of a process than an object.