Sometime between May and September, a white dwarf is expected to go thermonuclear.
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If you can see the Big Dipper, you’ll get to see a star go nova soon
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The article was pretty poorly worded. For one, it confuses the status of the red giant and the white dwarf, in one place seeming to imply that the white dwarf is a giant star. The white dwarf has gone through it's red giant phase, and is now a spent core approximately the size of the Earth, but with a mass still comparable to that of the Sun. (It can be much less than the Sun, but as fencruz stated, cannot be more than 1.44 times the Sun's mass or it will be destroyed as a type 1a supernova.) The companion star is now in its red giant phase, if it completes that phase before the white dwarf has become overweight, then the nova cycle will end quietly.
It also says that the nova explosion blows off all the accumulated hydrogen that doesn't fuse. Thats also not true. Most of the material will be ejected, but enough will remain to gradually increase the mas of the white dwarf. Eventually, if it accumulates enough material from its red giant companion before that star collapses to a white dwarf as well, it can gain enough mass to become a supernova.
A nova explosion brightens to a maximum of about 100,000 times the luminosity of the Sun. A type 1a supernova is typically 5 billion times brighter than the Sun.
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This is more likely the Spanish sense of the word: "No va." (doesn't go)
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Fusion reactors are relatively easy to build. Even some high school students have done it for science fair projects. These are Farnsworth fusors. The problem is, they don't produce anywhere near the energy that it takes to run them, though they are genuine fusion reactors. They run deuterium rather than straight hydrogen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
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It's an old white dwarf too
(at least according to the article)
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Naw bro, Imma need you to lock that down better. I got a mani-pedi and facial in the planner for Thursday at 4:30p, with a very exclusive stylist that goes full hissy-mode drama mama if you are even 1 minute late and I wanna be sure my drip is tight for the stargazing party. So stencil me in for something midday Friday for this Big-Badda-Boom, a'ight? Let my assistant know. Her name is Ms. Cheeken Gewd and you can Insta DM her.
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Oh I knew what they meant. But I enjoy pedantry
Edit - And what type of mythical future fusion reactors are we talking about, tokamaks and stellarators, or inertial confinement fusion like the NIF? You know, the one where discreet fuel pellets are injected and ignited in discreet events. Kind of like this star.
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TE-1713-CD/talks/posters/Perin-poster-paper.pdf
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It was a mild parody of the radio DJ from Fifth Element, as they might talk during their backstage dressing room down time with a few updated and modernized colloquialisms, complaining about that 100,000 year gap in the prediction. I thought about doing it more akin to his on-air personality though too, and throwing in a few of his trademark bzzz bzzz buzz off mannerisms
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OK. I thought it was clever. 5th Element great movie.It was a mild parody of the radio DJ from Fifth Element, as they might talk during their backstage dressing room down time with a few updated and modernized colloquialisms, complaining about that 100,000 year gap in the prediction. I thought about doing it more akin to his on-air personality though too, and throwing in a few of his trademark bzzz bzzz buzz off mannerisms
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Much closer to us, I explained to a bunch of people learning about optical fibers just how much information that reel on the desk could contain.
People do not think about the FIFO equivalent of a boring 20km fiber spool fed by a pedestrian 100Gb/s x16 lambdas system (nowhere near state of the art). There's a lot of information flying around at all times waiting for some receptor to sample it.
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Neat! Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3, Episode 1, "Evolution" was about this type of phenomenon.
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As a geophysicist, I like the last quote in the article. I can confidently state that the next really big earthquake in California will happen sometime between now and a 100 years from now, and in the eastern US sometime between now and a 1000 years from now.
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Corona Borealis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, visible from this part of the country?
View: https://youtu.be/Es2GIhjcSLQ?t=35
(edit: in case this is too subtle)
View: https://youtu.be/Es2GIhjcSLQ?t=35
(edit: in case this is too subtle)
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At what rate will it dim? If the timing works out, would it be possible to watch it go out?
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It will dim over the course of about a week. It isn't like turning a light bulb on and off; it is more like lighting a campfire and watching it burn out.
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I was guessing it would be very slow but if it dimmed from visible by eye to not over the course of a night maybe that's as close as you'd get other than finding all of the names of god.
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It should be visible most of the night for the Northern hemisphere.
You can find out the specifics for your location using this interactive sky chart. You want the region between Arcturus and Vega.
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That's handy to know. It wasn't clear from the article. I'm at 35 deg South, so was wondering if I'd be able to see it.
That's of course provided it doesn't rain that whole week, like it did when they could see the Aurora Australis everywhere else in the country.
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Reference to
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...and 2600 is very very close in cosmic scales. The Milky Way alone is 100,000 light years across. You think it's a long way down the road to the chemists...
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According to the Mythology section on the wiki page for the contellation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_Borealis#Mythology).
Both the Australian Aboriginals and Maori People have names for this constellation, so I guess we should be able to see it from the south.
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Too bad it isn't 1.414 times the sun's mass, or it couple claim to have rooted two at once...
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There's actually another kind in astrophysics, called pycnonuclear fusion. It occurs at extreme density, such as in the crusts of neutron stars.
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edit to delete drunk rambling
looking forward to some absolutely mind-blowing imagery of this event when it occurs.
looking forward to some absolutely mind-blowing imagery of this event when it occurs.
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Oh sure I'll stay home from work and wait but it won't show up. I'm not falling for that.
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Here is how I start with the context of that overall larger part of the sky. (Starting from the article)
Following the "arc" of the big dipper arm to Arcturus (the first bright star), then continuing along the same approximate arc to Spica (the second bright star), then to the keystone-shaped constellation Corvus is a nice thing to become familiar with. All of those are very visually prominent, even in light polluted areas. It's one of the first things I do when I'm figuring out what's where in that part of the sky.
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Kudos Tycho Brahe, all these centuries hence, on your discovery of "The New Star" from whence we got the term "nova".
His treatise titled in Latin "De Stella Nova" is the source of the astronomical term nova.
His treatise titled in Latin "De Stella Nova" is the source of the astronomical term nova.
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