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Related: About this forumThis Spinning, Snakelike Star System Might Blast Gamma Rays into the Milky Way When It Dies
This Spinning, Snakelike Star System Might Blast Gamma Rays into the Milky Way When It Dies
By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | November 19, 2018 11:00am ET
- click for image -
https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMi85NzAvb3JpZ2luYWwvMTg2MzUyLmpwZw==
Apep's stellar streams coil around the knot of orbiting stars at its core in this image from the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere's Very Large Telescope.
Credit: ESO/Callingham et al.
For the first time, astronomers have found a star system in our galaxy that could produce a gamma-ray burst one of the brightest and most energetic events known to occur in the universe.
The star system is officially called 2XMM J160050.7514245, but the researchers nicknamed it "Apep" after the Egyptian snake-deity of chaos. The name works nicely for the system, which is surrounded by long, fiery pinwheels of matter cast out into space, as shown in the above image from the Very Large Telescope.
Those pinwheels come from a pair of tightly orbiting binary "Wolf-Rayet" stars at the system's center. (They're close enough to one another that they look like a single bright light below the system's third, dimmer and more distantly orbiting star, also shown in the image.)
Wolf-Rayet stars are ultramassive suns that have reached the ends of their lives and burned up all their hydrogen. They thus fuse heavier elements, spinning rapidly and tossing material into space. They're bright enough that astronomers can detect their presence even when they reside in other galaxies. And when their cores collapse, triggering supernovas, astronomers believe they may create the long gamma-ray bursts sometimes detected incoming from deep space, the researchers said.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/64120-gamma-ray-burst-apep.html?utm_source=notification
TEB
(12,827 posts)Great reading over oatmeal and coffee I find myself reading out loud to boog. He appreciates you as well he is into science his field is trash can raiding and mooching I think he has a PhD
TEB
(12,827 posts)Hey man anymore science from Judi Lynn maybe we should make peanut butter toast your getting low on oatmeal man wag wag
I said thats the only one so far today boog
DFW
(54,302 posts)As long as everyone else does, too..........
Docreed2003
(16,850 posts)DFW
(54,302 posts)How could I think otherwise?
Docreed2003
(16,850 posts)I can't imagine knowing him personally. He brought incredible joy to untold fans of all ages and never failed to teach us the important lessons in life. I think the way his passing touched so many generations speaks to that impact. My 9yr old son was devastated when I broke the news to him.
DFW
(54,302 posts)I was expecting to be completely awed by some god-like presence. Instead, here was this down-to-earth guy with his Brooklyn accent intact, making one wisecrack after another, and just a smart, cool, friendly guy who wasn't in the slightest full of himself, and never for a second looked down on peons like me and my family (my wife and eldest daughter were along). My daughter timidly asked for an autograph for the fiancée of her roomie. Used to this from what must have been ten million times before, Stan opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out, from a huge stack he kept, a rectangular piece of cardboard with a Spider-Man face on it, asked the guy's name and had it sent to him. The guy's name was Ali, and he was a Pakistani, ergo, a Muslim. Stan, who was New York Jewish as you can get, couldn't care less, and was happy to do it. This was just like the one I had Stan make up for DU a few years later, when I was back in L.A.
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