It'll be a massive Zot!
Posted on 10/21/2015 3:19:56 PM PDT by LibWhacker
No way to know which way that gamma ray burst will go.....better have the hot dogs ready for grilling.
I chased down some of the links (to ESO and the preprint, etc.) and they’re saying there is a “paucity of data” at the moment. So no, I don’t believe they know that yet, although ESO has always been stingy about sharing its data with others. I’m sure once Hubble gets on it, we’ll have an answer shortly.
You’re right. They’re doomed to collide, imo. It’s just a question of when.
But remember, they are in orbit, millions of miles apart. There is a “bridge,” but it’s made of gas, plasma.
We just have to wait for the science teams to finish their analyses. The most exciting possibility for me is that we might get a gamma ray burst out of the merger! Wonder when the Earth was that close to one of those things? It’s only 160K ly away, in one of the Magellanic Clouds.
Oxygen producers. That’s hot!
Lol, we think alike!
I always thought that the “hottest, heaviest touching twin stars” were the twin red-heads I dated in college, but I could be wrong.
Yup, two O-type stars. Blue giants. A merger would be spectacular!
It'll be a massive Zot!
why is it not instantaneous??? the laws of gravity no longer apply?
They’re in orbit around one another. The Moon doesn’t instantly crash down on the Earth. It’s horizontal velocity guarantees it won’t. Same thing with these two stars. They are in orbit, with a greater separation than between the Earth and the Moon.
Now, in the case of these two blue giant stars, the gas "bridge" between them adds friction to the equation and slows them down. And just like the cannon ball, if you slow it down, they'll eventually fall out of orbit and collide.
OK, that i can understand, but i still don't see how they could ever touch without merging would they not have to orbit faster and faster the closer they got in order to keep separated with their own gravity and not a unified field forcing them to merge?
seems there should be something akin to an event horizon that once crossed gravity would simply take over
again i'm simply trying to understand it all
Thanks; I learned something (I think) just reading your replies to everyone.
I still can’t picture a Massive Moon and a Massive Earth, with a Plasma Bridge, not colliding in a shorter time than it even takes for their image to be observed by astronomers, but I defer to those who are more learned in these things.
I’d hit that....
With long-duration gamma-ray burst headed this way.
The only thing that can slow them down is that gaseous bridge connecting them. It, the bridge, is not a solid thing. It's not strong. It's more like a cloud than a solid thing.
How can a cloud slow down something that "weighs" millions of times more than the Earth? There is only one way, lots and lots of time. If we ignore the melting effect of the extremely high temperatures for a moment, I wonder how long it would take that gas to slow an actual freight train down to a crawl? One orbit? Two? It would depend on the density of the gas...
I'm just saying a freight train has a lot of momentum behind it, but nothing, NOTHING compared to the momentum of those two stars, each of which has the momentum of billions, trillions, of freight trains, and only a puny little cloud of gas to stop them.
Don't be offended at anything I say. I'm not talking down to you. I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm trying to make it fun for you, because learning should be fun. It was for me. In my first day in a physics class, the professor wrote on the board, "PHYSICS IS PHUN," and was it ever, and I've never forgotten it. :-)
none taken, just having a hard time with that much gravity, from both stars, combining yet not overwhelming
Now in truth, I don't know how long it would take exactly. We would have to get into the mathematics. It depends, among other things, on how dense the bridge is and how fierce the winds are (which I'm sure now I shouldn't have described as "a puff of air").
Another way to look at it is if such a merger happened almost instantaneously every time it happened, what would the probability be that we would ever get lucky enough to see one actually happening before our eyes?
“The stars are falling toward each other. But because of their horizontal velocity they continuously miss and just keep going around one another for a very long time.”
Same thing with the space station.
I always thought it was neat of Sir Issac Newton to explain how/why to make an artificial satellite orbit the earth.
Thank you, again, LibWhacker.
Auugh! — Don’t get into the mathematics!
Your skeptical side says: “If a catastrophic merger happens so quickly, how could we happen to catch it in the act of happening?”
and my skeptical side says,
“Exactly.”
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