Posts tagged stars

The photo, released Wednesday, was taken by a European Southern Observatory telescope and shows 100,000 stars crowded together in Messier 55, a globular star cluster located roughly 17,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius (The Archer). It is one of about 160 globular clusters orbiting the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy.

“As this formative period was just a few billion years , nearly all of the gas on hand was the simplest, lightest and most common in the cosmos: hydrogen, along with some helium and much smaller amounts of heavier chemical elements such as oxygen and nitrogen,” scientists with the European Southern Observatory wrote in a statement. Astronomers estimate the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. In contrast, our own star, the sun, formed only 4.6 billion years ago, and is made of more complex, heavier elements that were around at this later epoch.

(Source: futurenow321)

Astronomers have found four nearby white dwarf stars surrounded by disks of material that could be the remains of rocky planets much like Earth and one star in particular appears to be in the act of swallowing up what’s left of an Earthlike planet’s core.

The research, announced on Thursday by theRoyal Astronomical Society , gives a chilling look at the eventual fate that may await our own planet.

Since white dwarfs are the leftover cores of stellar-mass stars that have burnt through all their fuel, the material in their atmosphere is likely the leftover bits of planets. These worlds may have once been held in safe, stable orbits. But when their stars neared the ends of their lives, the stars may have expanded, possibly engulfing the innermost planets and disrupting the orbits of others.

(Source: futurenow321)

(Red Dots are stars being thrown out by the black hole)

It’s very difficult to kick a star out of the galaxy.

In fact, the primary mechanism that astronomers have come up with that can give a star the two-million-plus mile-per-hour kick it takes requires a close encounter with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core.

So far astronomers have found 16 of these “hypervelocity” stars. Although they are traveling fast enough to eventually escape the galaxy’s gravitational grasp, they have been discovered while they are still inside the galaxy.

Now, Vanderbilt astronomers report in the May issue of the Astronomical Journal that they have identified a group of more than 675 stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way that they argue are hypervelocity stars that have been ejected from the galactic core. They selected these stars based on their location in intergalactic space between the Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda galaxy and by their peculiar red coloration.

(Source: futurenow321)

In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is fundamentally a ‘shortcut’ through space and time. Spacetime can be viewed as a 2D surface (to simplify understanding) that, when ‘folded’ over, allows the formation of a wormhole bridge. A wormhole has at least two mouths that are connected to a single throat or tube. If the wormhole is traversable, then matter can ‘travel’ from one mouth to the other by passing through the throat. While there is no observational evidence for wormholes, spacetimes containing wormholes are known to be valid solutions in general relativity.

The term wormhole was coined by the American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler in 1957. However, the idea of wormholes had already been theorized in 1921 by the German mathematician Hermann Weyl in connection with his analysis of mass in terms of electromagnetic field energy.

This analysis forces one to consider situations…where there is a net flux of lines of force through what topologists would call a handle of the multiply-connected space and what physicists might perhaps be excused for more vividly terming a wormhole.

(Source: futurenow321)

A barred spiral galaxy located some 30 million light years away toward the constellation Horologium, Galaxy NGC 1512is bright enough to be seen with amateur telescopes. The galaxy is some 70,000 light years across, which is nearly as large as our own Milky Way galaxy. The core of the galaxy is remarkable for its “circumnuclear” starburst ring, which is an amazing circle of young star clusters that spans some 2400 light years across. Galaxy “starbursts” are episodes of vigorous formation of new stars and are found in various galaxy environments.

(Source: futurenow321)

Simply put,the PowerPottransforms the heat from cooking into electricity with no moving parts.  This is done using a technology called thermoelectric power generation. Thermoelectric technology was discovered in the early 1800’s, but found no consumer application in power generation due to the relatively high power needs of the devices in use at the time. However, times have changed. Today, nearly everyone uses microelectronics-based devices (smart phones, mp3 players, GPS units, etc.) which consume less than 5 watts of power.

(Source: futurenow321)

Also known as NGC123 this fascinating galaxy is dominated by millions of bright stars and dark dust, caught up in a gravitational swirl of spiral arms rotating about the center. Open clusters containing bright blue stars can be seen sprinkled along these spiral arms, while dark lanes of dense interstellar dust can be seen sprinkled between them. Less visible, but detectable, are billions of dim normal stars and vast tracts of interstellar gas, together wielding such high mass that they dominate the dynamics of the inner galaxy. Invisible are even greater amounts of matter in a form we don’t yet know - pervasive dark matter needed to explain the motions of the visible in the outer galaxy.

(Source: futurenow321)

It would consist of a modular array of movable thin film mirrors, which could be taken into space using current cargo ships and assembled piece by piece. This would be less expensive than building a gigantic array and launching it. These curved mirrors would redirect sunlight toward an internal collection of photovoltaic panels, and the solar energy would be converted into microwaves. Then the Earth facing portion, or the bottom of the margarita glass in the image at top, would transmit low frequency, low intensity waves toward Earth. At the receiving end, power plants would convert the microwave energy into electricity, adding it to the power grid.

(Source: futurenow321)