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Post by KTJ on Apr 5, 2019 17:02:41 GMT 10
…and all of mankind's imaginary gods disappear when humans disappear, extinguishing god delusions for good.
from The Washington Post…This heavy metal mini planet survived the death of its starIt's a fate that awaits almost all solar systems — including our own.By SARAH KAPLAN | 2:00PM EDT — Thursday, April 04, 2019 An artist's illustration of a planetary fragment orbiting a white dwarf star. — Picture: Mark Garlick/University of Warwick.THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN OUR SUN DIES:
First, the hydrogen-powered nuclear reactor in its center will run out of fuel. The sun will expand into a red giant, swelling to 100 times its size and swallowing Mercury, Venus and perhaps even our own planet, along with all life as we know it. Next, it will churn through the helium in its core, fusing those atoms into carbon until it lacks the materials and energy to continue. Finally, it will convulse and collapse, shedding its outer layers until all that remains is a dense, glowing sphere not much bigger than Earth — a white dwarf.
No one can say what our solar system will look like after that cataclysm, some 5 billion years in the future. But a newfound planetary system might offer a clue.
In the pale gleam of a white dwarf 410 light-years from Earth, the heavy metal core of some body, which may have been a planet once, drifts amid the wreckage of its former self.
The strange, shattered world, described on Thursday in the journal Science, is only the second body ever found orbiting this type of dead star. It is evidence, scientists said, of what happens to planetary bodies when their suns go extinct — a fate that awaits most solar systems in the universe, including our own.
“We have this glimpse into our possible future,” said Jessie Christiansen, an astronomer at NASA's exoplanet science institute who was not involved in the new study. “It's exciting” — if slightly terrifying — “and you can imagine that happening here.”
The host star of the newly discovered planet fragment is a white dwarf, known as SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. (To save time and breath, the scientists who study it call it simply, “1228”.)
Christopher Manser, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick in Britain, was first drawn to 1228 several years ago because it appeared to have a debris disk swirling around it. Using the world's largest optical telescope, the Gran Telescopio Canarias in Spain, he sought to split the light signature of the debris disk into its component parts, which would tell him what it was made of.
He was surprised to see regular disruptions in the disk — a stream of gas not unlike what comes from a comet's tail. A year of observations showed that the gas kept showing up every two hours, like clockwork. Such a regular signal could only be produced by a “planetesimal,” or planet fragment, orbiting the extinct star and somehow blowing off gas.
The newfound world's two-hour orbital period is so short that it must be incredibly close to the white dwarf; if you plopped it down in our solar system, it would be inside the atmosphere of the sun.
It must also be incredibly resilient. A white dwarf packs the mass of nearly an entire sun into a sphere 1 percent of the sun's size. These objects have enormous gravitational pull that could easily rip a planet apart.
“This body has to have a high enough density or internal strength to survive this intense gravity,” Manser said. “The densest thing we could think of was iron.”
There is one world in our solar system like this: the all-metal asteroid 16 Psyche. Scientists think this strange body was once the iron heart of a larger planet whose rocky crust and molten mantle were stripped away.
Perhaps the planetesimal has the same origin story: Born as a regular, rocky world farther out in the solar system, it got pushed toward the white dwarf by some passing disturbance. In the clutches of the dead star's tremendous gravity, the fragile crust and mantle disintegrated, leaving behind the tough metal core.
Observations of the white dwarf's debris disk support this notion. It is full of calcium, oxygen and magnesium — “the prominent building blocks of rocky bodies,” Manser said.
But there are lingering questions about this strange little world. Manser and his colleagues aren't sure what exactly is causing the gassy disturbances in 1228's debris disk. It may be that the gases are evaporating off the surface of the planetesimal. An alternative hypothesis suggests that the iron world's presence causes collisions in the debris disk that generate gas.
Meanwhile, the scientists hope to spot more planetary systems like this one. Many white dwarfs show evidence of “pollution” by rocky material, and at least six appear to be surrounded by debris disks.
“All of that suggests that up to half of all white dwarfs have planetary systems that survived their evolutions and are flinging in material,” Manser said.
Astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, pointed out that the majority of all stars in the universe are destined to become white dwarfs after they die. (Only stars that are much more massive than the sun are big enough to explode into a supernova and eventually form a black hole.)
Kaltenegger, who was not involved in the most recent study, published an analysis last year in the Astrophysical Journal Letters suggesting planets in the right orbit around a white dwarf could potentially be habitable for billions of years.
This latest discovery “is the first puzzle piece that there could be planets around white dwarfs, and they can be there for a while,” she said.
“Whether or not you can envision a second genesis [of life] around these remnant stellar cores,” she added, “it's still beautiful to envision.”__________________________________________________________________________ • Sarah Kaplan reports on the weird and wonderful world of Science for The Washington Post. She previously worked overnights on The Post's Morning Mix team, covering breaking news and other stories from the nation and the world. Sarah has a B.S. in International Culture and Politics from Georgetown University. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/04/this-heavy-metal-mini-planet-survived-death-its-star
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Post by pim on Apr 5, 2019 22:19:29 GMT 10
Hmmm yairs ... and your point is ...?  |
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Post by KTJ on Apr 6, 2019 8:36:18 GMT 10
My point is: the universe doesn't give a stuff about humans' god delusions and will wipe out those god delusions when it eventually wipes out human beings.
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Post by pim on Apr 6, 2019 9:01:58 GMT 10
Oh wow! A Daniel come to judgement! That’s Shakespeare by the way, who channels the the Old Testament when he has his character speak those lines. Funny, that! Oh wise young judge! Oh excellent young man! So there you have it gentle reader, KTJ solves the riddles of Life, the Universe and, well, Everything! A Nobel Prize for Kay Tee Jay! What the fuck are you doing in New Zealand?? Why aren’t you heading up the Smithsonian, or NASA? |
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 7, 2019 3:31:03 GMT 10
My point is: the universe doesn't give a stuff about humans' god delusions and will wipe out those god delusions when it eventually wipes out human beings. For someone who doesn't care for religion, it certainly seems to occupy a lot of your thoughts, Ktj |
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Post by KTJ on Apr 7, 2019 14:27:20 GMT 10
Hahaha ... somebody who has a god delusion has posted.
Hilarious.
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 7, 2019 22:11:47 GMT 10
Hahaha ... somebody who has a god delusion has posted. Hilarious. Hahaha, an atheist bigot who is ignorant of the truth has just posted. Hilarious. |
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Post by KTJ on Apr 8, 2019 11:58:44 GMT 10
Can you prove your god delusion is anything more than a god delusion inside your fucked-up imagination?
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 8, 2019 12:02:28 GMT 10
Can you prove your god delusion is anything more than a god delusion inside your fucked-up imagination? 'Unproven' only means more data is required, it doesn't render a claim false You can't really prove protons, electrons or quarks exist, either. But that isn't really the issue, is it? If I could give a good reason for God's existence, would you be willing to change your life accordingly? If not, you are being intellectually dishonest. |
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Post by KTJ on Apr 8, 2019 12:06:00 GMT 10
I am a supreme god. I created the universe.
There … I don't need to prove that because gullible religionists will believe it to be true.
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Post by pim on Apr 8, 2019 15:45:17 GMT 10
I am a supreme god. I created the universe. There … I don't need to prove that because gullible religionists will believe it to be true. Well then "God" you fucked up big time didn't ya!  |
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Post by KTJ on Apr 8, 2019 16:17:59 GMT 10
See? He called me god.
Yet he has no proof whatsoever that I am a god.
Just shows how gullible religionists are, eh?
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 8, 2019 22:43:32 GMT 10
I am a supreme god. I created the universe. There … I don't need to prove that because gullible religionists will believe it to be true. On the contrary, despite your inflated ego It's pretty obvious to the rest of us... - you aren't perfect - you aren't all knowing. - you aren't eternal. - you aren't supernatural. - you aren't omnipresent. Etc... |
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 8, 2019 22:48:01 GMT 10
Can you prove your god delusion is anything more than a god delusion inside your fucked-up imagination? "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion." Proverbs 18:2 There is proof that you are a fool. |
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 8, 2019 22:54:50 GMT 10
See? He called me god. Yet he has no proof whatsoever that I am a god. Just shows how gullible religionists are, eh? Don't waste your time with him, Pim "Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding them like grain with a pestle, you will not remove their folly from them." Proverbs 27:22 |
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Post by pim on Apr 8, 2019 23:12:58 GMT 10
« Quel supplice affreux, que d’avoir affaire à des sots » - Molière
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Post by KTJ on Apr 9, 2019 3:38:00 GMT 10
See? He called me god. Yet he has no proof whatsoever that I am a god. Just shows how gullible religionists are, eh? Don't waste your time with him, Pim "Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding them like grain with a pestle, you will not remove their folly from them." Proverbs 27:22 Can you prove that book wasn't merely written by ignorant savages? It's hilarious how religionists always resort to quoting from a book they claim is the word of a god delusion. |
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Post by Occam's Spork on Apr 9, 2019 4:27:56 GMT 10
Are you saying you've never believed anything you read from a book, Ktj? Books are responsible for 80% of everything you learn.
...but I suppose that explains a lot.
Who is ignorant now?
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Post by pim on Apr 9, 2019 5:50:29 GMT 10
Katie Jay in amongst all your repetitive trolling and insults and rudeness in which you utter the same boring tedious mantras, and have done so for the last ten years - or whatever, I haven't really counted them and I don't care enough to work back to give you the exact number of years - what becomes consistently obvious in amongst all your strident disavowals, your denials and your disrespect is a certain defensiveness in your tone. Let's face it: you've kept this up for ten fucking years!! And without ever bothering to vary the script!! I could write your posts for you because they always follow the same formula. You probably don't even type them anymore, you probably have it down to some pre-set program whereby you press a key and out comes the "god delusion" mantra. Same with all your Trump bullshit on the General Board. It's bullshit not because I'm any sort of fan of Trump, but it becomes bullshit when we read the same stuff, word-for-word, for the hundredth time. It's like you have to erect this barrage of bullshit to protect yourself lest we either don't get the point (believe it, Katie, we get it. And better than you realise!) or even worse you find yourself changing your mind!!! Here's the thing: we don't care! Nobody's trying to convert you. Nobody's trying to convince you of anything. So stop trying to be so destructive and nihilistic. If this Religion Board were a place of worship - a church or a mosque or a synagogue - you'd be the guy who bursts in on the worshippers spraying bullets from his automatic weapons. Occam restricts himself to this board, more or less, and he's like the guy who welcomed the Christchurch shooter to the mosque with a "Welcome, brother" seconds before the guy opened up on him and he was the shooter's first victim. But who gives a shit about the Christchurch shooter? We take the lead from your prime minister, Jacinda the Magnificent, and we won't even give him his name. And we don't care about you either. Not if you come here spraying abuse like the Christchurch shooter sprayed his bullets.
So ... either stay and accept that you're not going to find agreement here but be respectful in your disagreement and seek understanding rather than trolling, or fuck off and get a life somewhere.
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