4 ms·

Przybylski's Star

95 points by Metacelsus 4y ago

wruza 4y ago
Is this a straight sci-fi material or is there something else to know that wasn’t mentioned in a hypothesis section?
- ianai 4y ago
  Nobody knows, of course. But heavier elements do get pushed up to a stars surface so they look more prevalent. This is clearly the sort of oddity stuff science and society should inspect with gusto. There’s surely much to learn there. I wonder whether JWST has time allocated for it? Also at 356 ly away this is basically a neighbor. That could be very telling in itself. Should be easier to study too.
  - perihelions 4y ago
    - "But heavier elements do get pushed up to a stars surface" That doesn't help here, because these aren't elements that a stellar core can create in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      My understanding is that the origin of heavy elements in the Earth is not well understood. Ordinary supernovae don’t seem to produce enough, it is currently thought that they might come from neutron star collisions (a.k.a. “Kilonova”) but maybe stars like that star produce a lot.
      - adrian_b 4y ago
        The kinds of nuclear reactions that can produce heavy elements are reasonably well understood, because they depend on energetic constraints. Most chemical elements heavier than germanium need neutron fluxes of various intensities for their production, while a few isotopes need high-intensity proton fluxes. What is less well understood is which are the astronomical objects where the conditions for such reactions happen, e.g. a high-intensity neutron flux of an appropriate intensity and neutron energy. In any case, no known phenomenon could produce such a neutron flux in steady-state conditions, for a long time, so all candidates are explosion-like phenomena, e.g. when a star explodes becoming a supernova or a nova, or when two neutron stars collide. That is why if trans-plutonium elements would be produced in such a star that does not appear to explode, this would need a completely new explanation.
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      While the elements between strontium and uranium could not have been normally created in a stellar core, their presence is still not completely unusual, because most younger stars, including our Sun, have been formed from material that had been previously produced by supernova explosions, where the high neutron flux can produce such elements in great abundance. What would be really strange is if the attribution to elements heavier than plutonium of some of the peculiar spectra observed there is correct. While plutonium is the heaviest long lived element, with a lifetime of up to 100 million years, all heavier elements have a very short lifetime, so they should have already decayed since the supernova explosion that could have produced them. However the spectra identification for transitions that cannot be reproduced in a laboratory are extremely uncertain, because there exists no method to compute them with high precision for elements with so many electrons. So it is still possible that whatever has been identified tentatively as e.g. californium, might be just a much more common element that is present as a ion that has lost a large number of electrons and which is also in an extremely high magnetic field, so its spectrum might be very unlikely those that are produced in normal experimental conditions. This will not be completely new for astronomy. At some point it was believed that there are 2 new chemical elements discovered in stars due to their unusual spectra, which were named coronium and nebulium. Later it was discovered that they are just iron and oxygen whose spectra have been modified because their ions have lost more electrons than it can happen in normal terrestrial experiments.
      - wruza 4y ago
        That’s what I was thinking about, very interesting info, thanks!
- pmontra 4y ago
  Every alien in Area 51 could tell you that this is not a star but the largest heavy elements factory of this area of the galaxy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
behnamoh 4y ago
I always wondered if Poland could use a better alphabet to reflect the nuances of their language more appropriately. With so many Latin letters stacked together and the way Polish changes their pronunciation, it seems like the alphabet could be improved quite a bit.
- eklitzke 4y ago
  Polish is a slavic language and can also be written in Cyrillic.
- acadapter 4y ago
  Do you mean changing the digraphs to their one-letter equivalents from the Czech language, or something else? As a speaker of another Slavic language, I appreciate their choice to use "Ł" and "Rz". The Polish spelling system is still light-years ahead of English spelling, when it comes to reason and order.
- dvh 4y ago
  Přibilski
Qem 4y ago
It seems somebody decided the best way to deal with nuclear waste was to dump it at their sun.
- daveguy 4y ago
  And the odd mix of radioactive elements caused their sun to start oscillating in intensity destroying every planet that previously held life in their solar system... One of the great filters. Fun speculation aside, I would love to see this as the target of a gravitational telescope. If that oscillation is stable it would be an interesting periodic driver of evolution. Like so many species on earth have evolved through optimization of day/night/tidal/seasonal periodic effects.
sgt101 4y ago
Previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12470614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12470614
- perihelions 4y ago
  - "Some as-yet unidentified process is replenishing the star's isotopes. An idea I've seen[1] is that the radiation from its neutron star sibling, invisible to us, is powerful enough to trigger nuclear reactions in the star's ionosphere." Seems that idea's been excluded since then (?) - "The big problem with this is that these are sharp lines, so we can measure radial velocities to Przybylski’s Star, and it does not have a short period neutron star companion." https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/16/przybylskis-star-iii-neutron-stars-unbinilium-and-aliens/ https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/16/przybylskis-sta...

Przybylski's Star

95 points by Metacelsus 4y ago

wruza 4y ago

Is this a straight sci-fi material or is there something else to know that wasn’t mentioned in a hypothesis section?

ianai 4y ago
Nobody knows, of course. But heavier elements do get pushed up to a stars surface so they look more prevalent. This is clearly the sort of oddity stuff science and society should inspect with gusto. There’s surely much to learn there. I wonder whether JWST has time allocated for it? Also at 356 ly away this is basically a neighbor. That could be very telling in itself. Should be easier to study too.
- perihelions 4y ago
  - "But heavier elements do get pushed up to a stars surface" That doesn't help here, because these aren't elements that a stellar core can create in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    My understanding is that the origin of heavy elements in the Earth is not well understood. Ordinary supernovae don’t seem to produce enough, it is currently thought that they might come from neutron star collisions (a.k.a. “Kilonova”) but maybe stars like that star produce a lot.
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      The kinds of nuclear reactions that can produce heavy elements are reasonably well understood, because they depend on energetic constraints. Most chemical elements heavier than germanium need neutron fluxes of various intensities for their production, while a few isotopes need high-intensity proton fluxes. What is less well understood is which are the astronomical objects where the conditions for such reactions happen, e.g. a high-intensity neutron flux of an appropriate intensity and neutron energy. In any case, no known phenomenon could produce such a neutron flux in steady-state conditions, for a long time, so all candidates are explosion-like phenomena, e.g. when a star explodes becoming a supernova or a nova, or when two neutron stars collide. That is why if trans-plutonium elements would be produced in such a star that does not appear to explode, this would need a completely new explanation.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    While the elements between strontium and uranium could not have been normally created in a stellar core, their presence is still not completely unusual, because most younger stars, including our Sun, have been formed from material that had been previously produced by supernova explosions, where the high neutron flux can produce such elements in great abundance. What would be really strange is if the attribution to elements heavier than plutonium of some of the peculiar spectra observed there is correct. While plutonium is the heaviest long lived element, with a lifetime of up to 100 million years, all heavier elements have a very short lifetime, so they should have already decayed since the supernova explosion that could have produced them. However the spectra identification for transitions that cannot be reproduced in a laboratory are extremely uncertain, because there exists no method to compute them with high precision for elements with so many electrons. So it is still possible that whatever has been identified tentatively as e.g. californium, might be just a much more common element that is present as a ion that has lost a large number of electrons and which is also in an extremely high magnetic field, so its spectrum might be very unlikely those that are produced in normal experimental conditions. This will not be completely new for astronomy. At some point it was believed that there are 2 new chemical elements discovered in stars due to their unusual spectra, which were named coronium and nebulium. Later it was discovered that they are just iron and oxygen whose spectra have been modified because their ions have lost more electrons than it can happen in normal terrestrial experiments.
    - wruza 4y ago
      That’s what I was thinking about, very interesting info, thanks!
pmontra 4y ago
Every alien in Area 51 could tell you that this is not a star but the largest heavy elements factory of this area of the galaxy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

behnamoh 4y ago

I always wondered if Poland could use a better alphabet to reflect the nuances of their language more appropriately. With so many Latin letters stacked together and the way Polish changes their pronunciation, it seems like the alphabet could be improved quite a bit.

eklitzke 4y ago
Polish is a slavic language and can also be written in Cyrillic.
acadapter 4y ago
Do you mean changing the digraphs to their one-letter equivalents from the Czech language, or something else? As a speaker of another Slavic language, I appreciate their choice to use "Ł" and "Rz". The Polish spelling system is still light-years ahead of English spelling, when it comes to reason and order.
dvh 4y ago
Přibilski

Qem 4y ago

It seems somebody decided the best way to deal with nuclear waste was to dump it at their sun.

daveguy 4y ago
And the odd mix of radioactive elements caused their sun to start oscillating in intensity destroying every planet that previously held life in their solar system... One of the great filters. Fun speculation aside, I would love to see this as the target of a gravitational telescope. If that oscillation is stable it would be an interesting periodic driver of evolution. Like so many species on earth have evolved through optimization of day/night/tidal/seasonal periodic effects.

sgt101 4y ago

Previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12470614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12470614

perihelions 4y ago
- "Some as-yet unidentified process is replenishing the star's isotopes. An idea I've seen[1] is that the radiation from its neutron star sibling, invisible to us, is powerful enough to trigger nuclear reactions in the star's ionosphere." Seems that idea's been excluded since then (?) - "The big problem with this is that these are sharp lines, so we can measure radial velocities to Przybylski’s Star, and it does not have a short period neutron star companion." https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/16/przybylskis-star-iii-neutron-stars-unbinilium-and-aliens/ https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/16/przybylskis-sta...