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Strange white dwarf switches 'on' and 'off' in front of astronomers
- themodelplumber 5y agoJust a tad frustrating that "magnetic gating" has a name that is provided, but none of the internal properties of this process were revealed in the article. Surely there's at least an explainable reason why they chose the name? From what I can tell, it's like someone is doing the centrifugal force experiment by swinging a bucket of water around in a circle on a hot day. There is a water hose providing water to the bucket. At some point, the person swinging the bucket starts to get wet really fast, like over a 30 minute period they get way more wet than usual. We are nearly certain that this is because the bucket is getting more water on this person over this time period. We think we know why this wetness change happens, we call it "bucket-affect-gating", and maybe this explains it and solves the mystery, but gosh, it's all a fascinating question...aaand next article.
- raxxorrax 5y agoIt just mentions that the magnetic field aligns itself with the accreditation disc in such a way that it disallows further mass absorption. Otherwise a white dwarf would not be very luminous on its own and be switched off. Don't know exactly how it interacts with the mass in the accreditation disc, but it would seem feasible to call it that name.