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posted by martyb on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the Grumpy-got-tired-of-hearing-Sneezy-and-KaPow! dept.

When white dwarf meets brown dwarf, pow!

In the 1600s, western astronomers were just emerging from centuries of medieval thought, when the heavens were thought to be unchanging. You can imagine their astonishment when – in July of 1670, in what had been a blank, dark sky – some observers witnessed a bright pinprick of light that appeared, faded, reappeared, and then disappeared entirely from view. At that time, astronomers called such an event a nova or new star. This one was located in front of the constellation Cygnus the Swan and so received the name Nova sub Capite Cygni (a New Star below the Head of the Swan). Modern astronomers have learned it wasn't a new star. It wasn't even a spectacular collision of two main-sequence stars, as announced in 2015. Instead, using data from the ALMA telescope in Chile, astronomers now believe the event was a collision between an aging white dwarf star and a brown dwarf (star with too little mass to ignite thermonuclear fusion and thereby shine as most stars do).

The object in question is now called CK Vulpeculae.

The new work is based on observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile. The astronomers studied the debris from this explosion, which takes the form of dual rings of dust and gas resembling an hourglass with a compact central object (see image at top). Sumner Starrfield of Arizona State University is a co-author on a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. He said in a statement:

It now seems what was observed centuries ago was not what we would today describe as a classic 'nova.' Instead, it was the merger of two stellar objects, a white dwarf and a brown dwarf. When these two objects collided, they spilled out a cocktail of molecules and unusual isotopes, which gave us new insights into the nature of this object.

Brown and white dwarf stars.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 18 2018, @03:34PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 18 2018, @03:34PM (#750497) Journal

    Or we were always this stupid and we are now just learning to live with out stupidity?

    This. Triggering on "it is OK to be white" is a beautiful propaganda gift to white supremacists. It's sad to see people so unaware of the consequences of action. But maybe after they've been trolled for a few years, they'll figure it out.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:03PM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:03PM (#750505) Journal

    "Innocence lost", you say.
    It is one possible outcome, but there are many others and not all of them as pleasant [twitter.com]

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:56PM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 18 2018, @08:56PM (#750650) Journal
      I suppose they could dig the hole deeper. Let me know how that turns out.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @10:24AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @10:24AM (#751352)

        It's NOT OK to be White, because there is no "white" race, because race is actually culture, and I'll be damned if I want to equate my High German purity with some mongrel Englishman! So, take that, khallow, you spawn of inferior races, and genders, and college degrees.