Across the Universe, a star exploded so violently that it annihilated itself

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/across-the-universe-a-star-exploded-so-violently-that-it-completely-annihilated-itself

by Santosh83 • 7 years ago

94 54 7 years ago

syfy.com

geertj• 7 years ago

Photoid?

ignorantguy• 7 years ago

nice one! three body problem reference.

chongli• 7 years ago

Wow, it's impossible to Google that term. Every single result is related to "Photo ID."

saagarjha2• 7 years ago

You get a couple if you put it in quotes: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22photoid%22

ivalm• 7 years ago

Supernovae resulting from an impact by a large object moving close to the speed of light. Was used/popularized in a series called "Three Body Problem" as a weapon (book premise is the "black forest theory", which is since every sentient civ is a potential existential threat advanced civs would genocide any aliens they detect, photoids being one of the exotic weapons to accomplish this).

the8472• 7 years ago

An interesting tidbit is that the region of stellar parameters where the explosion is so massive that it leaves behind no compact remnant borders directly on the region where stars can collapse into a black hole without a supernova, they just wink out of existence.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Remnants...

FakeComments• 7 years ago

Am I reading wrong, or is no remnant in the middle of a black hole formation region?

It looks like “direct black hole” is on both sides of “no remnants”.

wallace_f• 7 years ago

I guess on both sides they start out as star -> collapse, but one either side the collapse continues into a hole. Within those parameters the star will stop collapsing and go supernova and never collapse back. I guess that's what it means.

_Microft• 7 years ago

Yes, this most likely just means that different processes are responsible for the same outcome (i.e. becoming a blackhole), depending on the mass of the star.

Edit: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova#250...

sandworm101• 7 years ago

Even the direct black holes dont quietly wink out. Once an even horizon forms, anything outside in now in a forming accretion disk. As things contract they start spinning. Things get hot/loud/bright until that disk settles dow.

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

So that chart seems to imply it is unknown whether the Sun will end up with "electron capture collapse" or as a neutron star. That's news to me, because when I was younger, I had the impression that the accepted theory was it would become a white dwarf.

raattgift4• 7 years ago

I think you're reading the exponent wrong. 10 times the mass of the sun where we generally get a neutron star; 9 times the mass of the sun is too light, so we get electron capture collapses; lighter still, and down to one times the mass of the sun (10^0 solar masses, the origin of the log-scale x axis) is where we get white dwarfs.

rolltiide• 7 years ago

Science Nonfiction channel?

cronix• 7 years ago

Stuff like this just boggles my mind. Imagine if we could capture/store even a small fraction of that energy that was released in mere seconds. It could probably power Earth for millions of years. Sorry if my maths are off a bit.

marcinzm3• 7 years ago

The energies of even less exotic stars are insane. If we could capture 1 second worth of our sun's output then we could power earth for almost a million years.

sametmax2• 7 years ago

The earth already does that, we just call it our ecosystem. It's why we have clean water, carrots, coal and, and the end the chain, the internet to talk about it.

jbay808• 7 years ago

If you actually did this, the surface of the Earth would melt or catch fire.

wruza• 7 years ago

we could power earth for almost a million years

With current consumption only. But we will populate its every corner, waste every amount on food production and fantasize what if we could capture just ten seconds a year (and terraform Moon/Mars). Humanity is a virus that cannot stop eating, reproducing in mass amounts and converting their host into a stinky factory.

I really doubt that so called Type II civilizations with Dyson spheres are a paradise to live in. Really advanced creatures would simply reduce their demand and live in the same beautiful place instead, occasionally feeding surplus energy to their scientifical interests.

maxerickson2• 7 years ago

In a hand wavy way, we already access the energy from stellar explosions, that's when uranium is naturally produced.

everdev• 7 years ago

Supply and demand would rapidly reduce this timeline even at incredible energy amounts. There is a virtually unlimited demand for energy. We'd build more energy intensive machines if the supply was so vast. Powering millions of large fans to break up a tornado or a hurricane would now be possible. We'd keep inventing power hungry ideas until balance was restored.

marcinzm3• 7 years ago

Theoretically we'd eventually cook the Earth with waste heat since energy is never lost so there is an upper limit for energy usage on the planet. Off Earth, not so much.

jackyinger• 7 years ago

Total tangent.. but there’s no innate reason to be totally boggled by huge (or incredibly tiny) numbers. I think getting all in a huff about them is an anti-pattern in science writing. I mean, we deal with gigabytes of data on machines with clock periods of nanoseconds every day.

What is cool is learning about new-to-you physical mechanisms.

aasasd• 7 years ago

Counterpoint: Graham's number.

It's like the Emperor's “enough dakka,” but with digits.

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

It's faintly ridiculous to have all the over the top expressions of amazement about something a couple hundred times the size of the Sun. If you're the layperson this is aimed at, who doesn't have a clue about stellar physics, then why not imagine a star 1,000 or 1,000,000 times the mass?

ajross2• 7 years ago

For those interested in the science and less in the fluff: this is notable not because it's "bigger" but because it's the first really good observation that fits with a "pair instability supernova", which is a well developed existing theory but has never been observed.

The basic idea (I'm not a professional here) is that the gamma rays produced in the stellar core provide the bulk of the pressure that holds up the outer star against collapse. But past a certain temperature, the energy of those gamma rays starts preferentially resulting in electron/positron pair production. And the effective pressure per energy of an e-/p+ pair is significantly lower than it is for photons. So the outer core layers start falling downward, picking up energy as they do, and getting hotter. And the still higher temperatures result in gamma production which is even more likely to result in pairs, so the pressure drops still further and the core contracts more, and you get a runaway reaction.

But the runaway is of temperature and not so much density, so what's left after the outer layers of the star all get blown away is a comparatively low density core of extremely hot plasma, which simply diffuses without recollapsing into a neutron star of black hole.

zazagura2• 7 years ago

Why don't the e-/p+ annihilate back into photons? Where do the p+ go?

whatshisface• 7 years ago

Some do, but if they are moving apart fast enough they'll never meet again.

blattimwind• 7 years ago

How do you explode without annihilating yourself?

saagarjha2• 7 years ago

You leave behind a collapsed core.

peter303• 7 years ago

Perhaps we are witnessing a war between Type II civilizations. A Type II civilization on the Kardashev Scale directly harnesses the energy of a star.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Improbable, but an amusing hypothesis.

CapricornNoble• 7 years ago

Could have been a weapon's test gone wrong, like that recent Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile that blew up. A very amusing line of thought indeed.

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

If the brightness didn't go away, and that's unusual, why are people concluding it "annihilated itself"? I don't see why that would be the natural assumption. Maybe there is a black hole in the center and something about the dynamics is producing more radiation than usual from the stuff falling into it?

YeGoblynQueenne• 7 years ago

> It was pretty much at this point reading the journal paper that my brain wanted to leap out of my skull and run around in panicked circles screaming. I’ve run out of adjectives to describe an event like this.

Is it OK if I'm interested in science without acting as if I was watching a football game? Or do I lose my nerd cred for not expressing exuberant excitement with colourful language every time I hear how big the universe is, or how vast the cosmic scales, etc?

gjm11• 7 years ago

I don't remember Phil Plait being quite so breathless when he was blogging at, er, wherever he was before. (ScienceBlogs, RIP?) Is it a SyFy house style thing, perhaps?

Across the Universe, a star exploded so violently that it annihilated itself

Related Stories