Now-dead radio telescope finds bizarre venomous-spider star:
Astronomers have discovered black widows and redbacks in space. While these cosmic objects don't kill and eat their mates, the stars share their eight-legged counterparts' violent behavior toward companions.
In addition to the run-of-the-mill spider stars, the researchers also discovered a bizarre black widow-redback crossbreed. The scientists used the now-destroyed Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico to discover the weirdo stars.
[...] In a new paper, researchers identify three new black widows and a redback in the Milky Way. They also found a spider star that defies categorization, almost like a crossbreed of the two species.
When a spider star has reduced its companion to significantly less than a tenth the mass of the sun (usually 0.02 to 0.03 times the sun's mass), that star is called a black widow. Redbacks have heftier companions that boast more than a tenth of the sun's mass. These binary companions of redbacks pass between the spider star and Earth periodically, creating temporary eclipses. The shriveled companions of black widows don't typically pull off that trick.
[...] The seeming crossbreed star is difficult to categorize. For now, researchers have labeled it a redback because its companion sometimes eclipses its ticking light. And that companion has a mass at least 0.055 times the mass of the sun (possibly larger), which would be quite heavy for a black widow, though quite light for a redback. For now, the exact mechanisms of that system are still a mystery.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dltaylor on Thursday January 21 2021, @10:20AM (2 children)
Neutrons have more mass/energy than their proton and electron components, which is why neutrinos were first hypothesized. "Bare" neutrons decay into a proton, electron, and antineutrino (although there is some speculation that neutrinos are their own antiparticles) which makes up some difference in mass/energy and momentum.
When the core of a star, consisting of some hydrogen, much more helium and various elements that astronomers call "metal" (carbon, oxygen, nothing heavier than iron) collapses into a neutron star, where do the neutrino equivalents come from?
As I understand it, the immense gravity collapses the electron orbitals into the somewhat empty space inside protons (three quarks, but still space between them), but that is not quite enough. I have not found any reference to the conversion of the energy of the gravity-driven collapse or the explosion that ejects the outer parts of the star into the neutrino mass-energy to convert all of those atoms into neutrons.
Anyone have a link?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:31PM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:39PM
I believe the neutrinos arise due to a mis-spelling of neutrons. Sterile neutrinos [sic] occur due to crossbreeding of incorrect star neutrons - origins similar to an ass cross bred from donkey and horse, which is also sterile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:09PM (3 children)
"bizarre venomous spider star", eh? that supposed to be some clicky-baity?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:51PM
Well, it killed the telescope, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @05:32PM
Spider bait?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:31PM
I was concerned about this when submitting. "Bizarre venomous spider star" is not the same thing as a normal venomous spider-star. Besides the concern about "heavier than iron" and neutrinos above, there is the problem with just what stellar spider venom would be composed of, and how it works. And red-backs, of course, are Australian, so probably iocaine power? No, we are talking dual star systems, where one star is the spider, and the other is having its guts ripped out of it. So how does the spider star get the victim star to hold still for this?