This new ultraviolet mosaic image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft, released August 15, 2007, shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. REUTERS/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout.
Posted on 08/16/2007 6:36:23 AM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A large star in its death throes is leaving a huge, turbulent tail of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen in its wake that makes it look like an immense comet hurtling through space, astronomers said on Wednesday.
Nothing like this has ever previously been witnessed in a star, according to scientists who detected it using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an orbiting space telescope that observes the cosmos in ultraviolet light.
This tail, spanning a stunning distance of 13 light-years, was detected behind the star Mira, located 350 light-years from Earth in the "whale" constellation Cetus.
"There's a star with a tail in the tail of the whale," said one of the researchers, astronomer Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California.
A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
Rocketing through our Milky Way galaxy at 80 miles per second (130 km per second) -- literally faster than a speeding bullet -- the star is spewing material that scientists believe may be recycled into new stars, planets and maybe even life.
"We believe that the tail is made up of material that is being shed by the star which is heating up and then spiraling back into this turbulent wake," said astronomer Christopher Martin of California Institute of Technology, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.
Mira is a so-called "red giant" star near the end of its life. Astronomers believe our sun will become a similar red giant in 4 to 5 billion years, but they doubt it will develop such a tail because it is not moving through space as quickly.
'PHOENIX-LIKE REVIVALS'
"It's giving us this fantastic insight into the death processes of stars and their renewals -- their phoenix-like revivals as their ashes get cycled backed into the next generation of stars," added Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University in New York.
Shara said he expects that as this telescope continues mapping the cosmos in ultraviolet light for the first time, other similar stars may be discovered. "There must be lots more of these things," Shara said.
NASA images show the tail as a glowing light-blue stream of material including oxygen, carbon and nitrogen.
This material has been blown off Mira gradually over time -- the oldest was released roughly 30,000 years ago as part of a long stellar death process -- and is enough to form at least 3,000 future Earth-sized planets, the scientists said.
The astronomers were surprised to find this unique feature in Mira, a well-known star studied since the 16th century. Mira (pronounced MY-rah) stems from the Latin word for "wonderful."
Despite having about the same mass as the sun, Mira has swollen up to over 400 times the size of the sun, meaning the force of gravity is having a hard time holding it together, Seibert said.
The tail stretching 13 light-years is thousands of times the length of our solar system. The nearest star to Earth, called Proxima Centauri, is located 4 light-years away.
While this star looks like a comet, stars and comets are quite different celestial bodies. Comets in our solar system are relatively small objects made up of rock, dust and ice trailed by a tail of gas and dust.
Unlike our solitary sun, Mira is a so-called binary star traveling through space orbiting a companion believed to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, known as a white dwarf.
Scientists think Mira in time will eject all its gas, leaving a colorful shell known as a planetary nebula that also gradually will fade leaving behind a white dwarf.
ping
It’s Bush’s fault.
Rove, you magnificent bastard...
Comet Tail?
Mark Seibert has little kids, and at night when he puts them to bed he reads them Dr. Seuss books.
Pretty much everything you’re seeing in this picture and others like it are plasma physics phenomena. Gravity has little if anything to do with it.
The only reason comets show a "tail" is that there is a solar wind pushing stuff off of them in a particular direction, there is no analogy in this case.
Wouldn't it be more like floating debris? There isn't enough new material to form a star that would control a new solar system.
yeah..... "life" is trailing behind a star, in open space, cause doncha know that we've seen all kinds of that before. I've got no problem with somebody spewing stupid cr@p, but a least define what the cr#p is.... what do they mean "life".
I think the whole trend to finding "life" in or on another planet by some "academics" is to basically show all the Christians that "see, we're not that special. There is no "one God".
I feel sorry for them in a way. To not see the vastness of the cosmos and come away with a sense that for some reason in this churning cauldron we are here and are "special".
Just our existence in this solar system is amazing...The further along in college and post graduate education the more I became convinced of the fact that we are unique....because it makes no sense for us to exist by randomness.
Considering this came from reuters has anyone checked:
a) If the comet phot was altered or retouched
b) If any of the facts were exagerated (Maybe the tail is only a couple of light years long.)
I’m just sayin’....
Then, according to the way materialistic naturalists approach the miraculous in the Bible, doesn't that mean that it can't have happened?
Space ping
Whale of a tale I’ll tell you lad,.....
He’s sump’n, ain’t he?
I’m tellin’ ya...
“Wouldn’t it be more like floating debris? “
“An’ I said . . .
Look here brother,
Who you jivin’ with that Cosmik Debris?” FZ
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Scientists have no imagination.
This actually is the first real proof of extra-terrestrial intelligent life. What we are seeing is an intra-galactic spaceship exhaust plume, powered by a star sized fusion reactor. It’s obvious that the inhabitants of the spaceship are far superior to man; otherwise they would never have been able to harness all of that power.
That makes about as much sense as claiming that the dust from the star could be the seeds of new life!
Death Star -- fully operational, and headed for Alderaan, with Grand Moff Tarkin in command.
their poont is that elements like oxygen and carbon are formed only when a star dies. The 'debris' given off by a dying star goes back out into the interstellar medium where it can accrete and form new star systems. the fascinating thing is that all of the carbon, oxygen and nitrogen in your body was forged in the nuclear furnace of dying stars a very long time ago.
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