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posted by cmn32480 on Monday May 23 2016, @03:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the stars-on-life-support dept.

A recent study of Messier 4 (M4), and other local globular clusters, appears to partially contradict our current understanding of stellar evolution.

Using the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES), a team of astronomers from the Monash University, the Australian Astronomical Observactory (AAO) and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) were able to detect the chemical composition of the stars in M4. Their observations revealed that approximately half of the stars in the cluster appear to have skipped the red giant phase of their evolution, and proceeded directly to the white dwarf stage. This remarkable transition is contrary to computational simulations and our current understanding of stellar evolution;

... [the] chemical analysis has revealed that premature death tends to only occur in the sodium-rich/oxygen-poor stars. The surprising thing is that our best models of these stars do not predict that they will die young.

The exact process which causes this transition remains unknown. The team hope that, with further observation with HERMES, they may shed light thereon, and better our understanding of stellar evolution.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @03:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @03:53PM (#349932)

    Stellar collapse prevented by mining of Hydrogen...

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 23 2016, @05:48PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday May 23 2016, @05:48PM (#349963) Journal

      Given that those stars are oxygen-poor, I would say oxygen mining is more probable,

      Anyway, IIUC what has been skipped was not the collapse, but the preceding expansion.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday May 23 2016, @06:15PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 23 2016, @06:15PM (#349969) Journal

        Well, the expansion phase is when it's easiest to mine Hydrogen. You'd still need a ram-scoop to collect it, since it's quite a thin vacuum, but it might support a fusion generator if you didn't go too fast. Otherwise you'd need something more towards a total coversion engine, and then why would you need the Hydrogen.

        The atmosphere of a red giant has been described as "a red hot vacuum", so you'd need an "orbit" wide enough to allow you to cool off in between dives. Either that or you'd need a powered cooling system ("Pump all the heat into that tower and let it get white hot so it can radiate away. Of course that uses more power, which means you need to radiate more heat.").

        N.B.: The atmosphers of the red giant is from the outer, lighter, layers of the star, and so it is much richer in Hydrogen than the inner parts. It still seems quite unlikely (in case you were in doubt).

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @03:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @03:57PM (#349934)

    TFT: "HERMES Observations Reveal Permature Stellar Death in Local Globular Clusters" > bolded word should be "Premature".

    That aside, an interesting development in astrophysics. Thanks to the submitter and editors.

    • (Score: 2) by b0ru on Monday May 23 2016, @04:14PM

      by b0ru (6054) on Monday May 23 2016, @04:14PM (#349941)

      Fiddlesticks. I've no idea how I didn't spot that one... Thanks!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:33AM (#350251)

      Yepper

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday May 23 2016, @05:34PM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday May 23 2016, @05:34PM (#349956) Journal

    Pre-mature stellar death resulting from not cutting back on the salt?

    Or more seriously, is this possibly an effect of the rather crowded conditions of a globular cluster?

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 23 2016, @06:17PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 23 2016, @06:17PM (#349970) Journal

      Yeah, the "crowded conditions" making it difficult to radiate away heat seems like a reasonable guess. But the mechanism still needs explaining in detail.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday May 23 2016, @06:12PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Monday May 23 2016, @06:12PM (#349967)

    I'm willing to put money that this isn't the only astro-physical model that is "wrong". When your science leaves the realm of experimental testing due to distance or scale, it becomes religion not science. While it's interesting to read all the ideas about our universe, the enlightened critical thinker must always keep the notion in the back of their heads that these are all just best guesses, and all the mathematical equations in the world are nothing more than rituals performed in front of an altar. Tomorrow, next decade or next century, someone will come along and stand the universe on its head again and people will think back to today and how silly we were to believe what we believe. It's the way of the world. You can't grow without leaving part of yourself behind.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @06:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @06:29PM (#349975)

      This. There are so many possible variables, and we don't even know what some of those are due to our incomplete knowledge of how some basics things like gravity actually work. A good example of proper science at work, "Hey, looks like our models aren't quite there yet, lets look some more and see if we can figure out why," instead of "Hey, the universe is wrong, that can't possibly be right, BURY THE DATA!"

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @08:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @08:56PM (#350023)

        instead of "Hey, the universe is wrong, that can't possibly be right, BURY THE DATA!"

        Or better yet, "let's invent a new particle to account for the error..."

        • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday May 23 2016, @10:20PM

          by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday May 23 2016, @10:20PM (#350047)

          Or better yet, "let's invent a new particle to account for the error..."

          Which is actually a variation of "Hey, looks like our models aren't quite there yet, lets look some more and see if we can figure out why*,". You just need to bear in mind the new particle is part of an approximate model.

          *Courtesy of previous AC.

          --
          It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
        • (Score: 1) by terryk30 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @12:56PM

          by terryk30 (1753) on Tuesday May 24 2016, @12:56PM (#350272)

          (geez, replying to a lame AC comment that stayed at 0... but this one always bugs me)

          The origins of the "new particle" snarky objection warrant a more patient response than this, but: you're mistaken if you think a physicist postulating a new particle "on the record" does so lightly.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @10:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @10:12PM (#350045)

      When your science leaves the realm of experimental testing due to distance or scale, it becomes religion not science.

      Oh, please. Not this again.

      How often do religions change their holy books because they were contradicted by new observations? The main difference between science and religion is that in science we change theories to reflect newly found facts, while religion denies facts that go against their theories (see: creationists).

      Science based on observation can still be science. You gather data, make a model, gather more data and see how it fits your model. If it fits, great. If it doesn't, you change the damn model.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:56AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @03:56AM (#350141)

        Unless it might all be electrical. Jus' saying.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 24 2016, @08:25AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 24 2016, @08:25AM (#350197) Journal

          Unless it might all be electrical.

          Then where's the evidence? It's worth noting we can and do measure electric fields in space and they are orders of magnitude too small for the electric universe theory.

    • (Score: 1) by terryk30 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @12:42PM

      by terryk30 (1753) on Tuesday May 24 2016, @12:42PM (#350266)

      When your science leaves the realm of experimental testing due to distance or scale, it becomes religion not science.

      For the ideal of how science progresses, sure. But there's a lot that can still be done - has been done - when you can't do strict experiments. Loosely speaking I suppose these are often called studies, or similar depending on the field.

      The classic example is whether smoking is harmful to oneself. If we reject any work or findings that don't use formal experiments, then we can't say smoking is harmful because we've never strapped smoking emulation masks onto 100 randomly-selected teenagers and followed them for 50 years.

      Going back to stars, no we can't do experiments, but we do have a large population of stars at various stages of their lifetimes we can observe. Yes, the observations are tricky and it's difficult to maddening to tease apart the properties you're looking for from other effects. But with enough overlapping models of different phenomena and increasingly pervasive and precise observations, it's possible to confidently nail some things down.

      ...people will think back to today and how silly we were to believe what we believe.

      I only read the summary but it sounds like we have more work to do on possible transitions out of what's called "main sequence". No, those aren't weasel words since YES "we" have a few things wrong; this is routine for this sort of work. I said it was tricky. But we're not having to throw out the entire picture of stellar evolution.

  • (Score: 0, Redundant) by donkeyhotay on Monday May 23 2016, @06:36PM

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Monday May 23 2016, @06:36PM (#349977)

    Ermegerd! It's permature!

  • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Monday May 23 2016, @09:22PM

    by bitstream (6144) on Monday May 23 2016, @09:22PM (#350031) Journal

    So what's the sodium and oxygen status of our own sun?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @10:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23 2016, @10:21PM (#350048)

      If we find a way to crash the Salt Lake into it, maybe we can prevent it from bloating and frying Earth when it "expires" in a few billion years.

      Utah won't mind, I hope.

      • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Monday May 23 2016, @11:34PM

        by bitstream (6144) on Monday May 23 2016, @11:34PM (#350062) Journal

        I think there is one place in Utah that might as well be roasted a bit without any loss. :p