3 ms·
That ended abruptly. And on a bit of a grim tone. How many college students leave home and never return, not even once. Oh well, at least it wasn’t written in t
by mberning 7y ago
That ended abruptly. And on a bit of a grim tone. How many college students leave home and never return, not even once. Oh well, at least it wasn’t written in the New Yorker where it would have required a 10k word “slice of life” preamble before even discussing the star. “Dr. Li always enjoyed feeding pigs on the weekend...”
As for the star, I wonder what type of relativistic effect a person orbiting it might experience. I assume 4 million miles per hour is an appreciable fraction of C.
- minblaster 7y agoIt's less than 1% of c unfortunately [1111 miles per second]. (https://www.google.com/search?q=4m+mph+in+miles+per+second https://www.google.com/search?q=4m+mph+in+miles+per+second)
- mirimir 7y agoIt's 0.6% c.
- simonh 7y agoWow, that’s actually really moving! I wonder how close the star got to being shredded in the process. The gravitational forces must have been pretty powerful.
- gsaga 7y agoIt's just freefalling. So there won't be any significant forces on it unless it gets very close.
- simonh 7y agoWell that's the questions really isn't it, how close did it have to get and what was the gravity gradient? Too close and tidal forces would strip off the star's upper layers, or tear the whole star apart. We detected that happening not long ago. https://www.sciencealert.com/we-ve-just-caught-the-immediate-aftermath-of-a-black-hole-tearing-apart-a-star https://www.sciencealert.com/we-ve-just-caught-the-immediate...