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This makes me wonder about the nature of gravity. How much of the gravitational pull from the companion would disappear? How fast? It seems like a reduction in
by Steel_Phoenix 8y ago
This makes me wonder about the nature of gravity. How much of the gravitational pull from the companion would disappear? How fast? It seems like a reduction in gravity would be immediately followed by a massive energy release. It's impressive that the remaining star is moving away fast enough to avoid being destroyed in the resulting blast.
- whatshisface 8y agoThe reduction in gravity isn't due to anything special, the matter in the "anchor" star is just leaving to go somewhere else. (In all directions.)
- Steel_Phoenix 8y agoThat makes it seem like gravitationally, the anchor star would just be expanding. My intuition thinks the remaining star gets slammed by debris before the direction and strength of the anchor dissipates enough to launch it away, though my confidence in my stellar intuition is low.
- whatshisface 8y agoYour intuition contains some truth: according to Gauss's law, the gravitation of the expanding nova shell shouldn't change at all until it passes by its surviving companion. The matter expanding away from the companion will gravitate less, but that will be canceled out by the increased attraction to the matter expanding towards the companion. Really, we're just assuming the hot, dense, and small dwarf can sustain the licking it gets when the remnant hits it. The smallness helps it get hit by less material, moreso if it's far away. It's gravitationally bound so it won't shatter - the most you could do to disassemble it would be to boil off its matter by raising it all to escape velocity. It takes a lot of energy to do that.