"Zombie" supernova rises from dead in shock discovery
- Thread starter Juba
- Start date
caballero reyes
The Living Force
And what if instead of appearing to be dying is the opposite, that through the supernova is giving birth to something. Among other things, a huge amount of energy.
caballero reyes said:
Yes. It certainly makes it evident that mainstream astronomical ideas need some revision. Maybe stars are like lightbulbs connected to an electrical current. Sometimes, when there is a massive surge of power, a lightbulb can blow up; other times, it will just flare and can do that repeatedly.
Laura said:
Exactly. For years the proponents of the electric universe theory have stated that the stars age based on its appearance (red giant, brown dwarf, blue giant, etc) is nonsense. To demonstrate this point they've repeatedly mentioned examples of stars moving from one 'age category' to a younger one like the case described in this thread.
It seems that the aspect of a star is defined by the amount of electricity it exchanges with the surrounding space:
http://www.everythingselectric.com/electric-star/
Electric star categories
The terms giant and dwarf applied to stars are misleading. They are just calculated on the standard model of the sun. The notion of a stars age based on its appearance or spectrum has no validity for the same reason.
Stars on the main sequence may be characterised as self regulating cosmic power transformers, that focus diffuse galactic electrical energy to catalyse fusion in their photosphere to provide radiant energy.
Like the Sun such stars derive their luminosity from very bright anode tufts in their plasma sheaths.
Moving upward diagonally to the right the current density increases. Anode tufting becomes more crowded and their mutual repulsion forces the photosphere to grow to accommodate them.
At the top right of the main sequence the light from those tufts is electric blue of a true arc and the stars appear as blue giants - intensely hot objects appearing considerably larger than our sun. As you might expect blue giants tend to be concentrated on the central axis of our galaxies spiral arm discharges.
Red stars must collect more electrons than the plasma can deliver continually to its surface. So bright anode tufts are unnecessary, the anode expands instead by forming a negative space charge sheath, and as that sheath expands its electric field grows stronger.
Electrons caught up in the field are accelerated to ever greater energies and before long they become energetic enough to excite neutral particles they collide with in the outer sheath to take on a uniform red glow.
A white dwarf is a star whose discharge current is satisfied by all the approaching electrons, drift electrons plus those that randomly move towards the anode. it has no anode tufting. It is rather like moving a low energy corona of a main sequence star down into the atmosphere of the white dwarf star. That is why the dim star Sirius B is brighter in x-rays than Sirius A because the corona emits x-rays.
A summary of some important points:
electric electromagnetic stars suns model theory evidence hypothesis
A red or brown dwarf can be characterised as an independent gas giant type object under low electrical stress from its galactic environment
A main sequence star is electrically stressed so it resorts to a tufted anode, which regulates the output of the star
Red giants are normal stars under low electric stress
White dwarfs are stars with a low luminosity coronal discharge only
Olivierlejardinier
Jedi Council Member
From here :
A supernova explosion that skywatchers in the Far East observed almost 850 years ago has produced the most unusual remnant astronomers have ever found. “I’ve worked on supernovae for [decades], and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Robert Fesen (Dartmouth College), who photographed the weird object in late October 2022 with the 2.4-meter Hiltner telescope at Kitt Peak.
Fesen presented his results at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle; a paper has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters (preprint available here). In other work presented at the AAS meeting and submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (preprint here), his coauthor Bradley Schaefer (Louisiana State University) argues that the supernova resulted when two white dwarf stars collided, leaving an extremely energetic “zombie” star behind.
Amateur astronomer (and Fesen’s second coauthor) Dana Patchick discovered the nebula in August 2013 in archived images from NASA’s Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The infrared images didn’t show much detail, though. Originally, Patchick believed he had found a planetary nebula — his 30th find, hence the name Pa 30 — but later spectroscopic observations revealed that it’s more likely to be a supernova remnant. However, the nebula doesn’t produce many radio or X-ray waves, and there’s no neutron star or black hole in its center. Instead, the central star (sometimes known as Parker’s Star, after University of Hong Kong astronomer Quentin Parker who first studied its spectrum) turns out to be a peculiar white dwarf.
Still, astronomers are now confident about its relation with SN1181, a zero-magnitude supernova that appeared in northern Cassiopeia on August 6th of 1181 AD. Chinese and Japanese observers recorded this “guest star” slowly fading over a period of six months.
In the 1970s, astronomers speculated that supernova remnant 3C58 and the associated pulsar PSR J0205+6449 were the most likely remains of the 12th-century blast. However, says Schaefer, later research showed that 3C58 is much too old. Also, the sky position doesn’t match the Chinese observations. Pa 30 fits the bill on all accounts, according to a 2021 study by Andreas Ritter (University of Hong Kong), Parker, and their colleagues. In particular, the measured expansion velocity of the nebula — some 11,000 kilometers per second — puts its age at 850 years old.
Then again, says Schaefer, the central white dwarf star is “a whacko weird thing.” Its surface temperature is some 200,000 kelvin; it shines at 130 times the luminosity of the Sun, and it is fading quite rapidly, by 1.7 magnitudes over the past century. Most remarkably, it produces an unprecedentedly speedy stellar wind that travels outward at 16,000 kilometers per second, or 5% the speed of light.
“It’s insane,” Fesen says. “Stars simply don’t have 16,000 km/s winds. Even giant, luminous Wolf-Rayet stars have winds at a few thousand km/s at most.” So what peculiar kind of supernova might explain all this?
Fesen’s new observations of Pa 30, obtained in the light of ionized sulfur and revealing much more detail than infrared or visible-light broadband images, contain the last piece in the puzzle of SN1181. Despite the nebula’s distance of almost 8,000 light-years, the image shows intriguing radial filaments, presumably produced when the fierce stellar wind erodes away small clumps of lower-velocity gas ejected by the explosion. AAS media fellow Ben Cassese, who just happened to be in the control room of the telescope when the observations were carried out, vividly remembers Fesen’s excitement that night. “Even the raw data clearly showed the remarkable pattern,” he says.
According to the 2021 paper by Ritter and his colleagues, SN1181 was a low-luminosity supernova of the rare type Iax. While “normal” Type Ia supernovae result from the catastrophic detonation of a white dwarf star, in less luminous Type Iax supernovae the exploding star somehow survives.
Theorists have come up with various scenarios to explain Iax explosions. Some of these predict the existence of a matter-donating companion star; however in the case of Parker’s Star, detailed observations by NASA’s TESS observatory indicate that it’s single. According to Schaefer, only one model matches the observations of Pa 30 and its “whacko weird” central star: the collision of two white dwarfs, one of which consists mainly of carbon and oxygen and the other of oxygen and neon.
Jacco Vink (University of Amsterdam), an expert on supernova remnants who was not involved in these studies, agrees. “It’s great that they have identified a remnant” for SN1181, he says, “especially since it is from a type of supernova that is not yet completely understood.”
Future observations of the intriguing remnant and the “zombie star” at its core will shed more light on this rare and peculiar type of supernova explosion. Fesen has already applied for observing time on both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. “The JWST image will be simply amazing,” he says. “It would make for a great 4th of July image.”
850-year-old Supernova Left "Zombie Star" Behind
A supernova explosion that skywatchers in the Far East observed almost 850 years ago has produced the most unusual remnant astronomers have ever found. “I’ve worked on supernovae for [decades], and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Robert Fesen (Dartmouth College), who photographed the weird object in late October 2022 with the 2.4-meter Hiltner telescope at Kitt Peak.
Fesen presented his results at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle; a paper has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters (preprint available here). In other work presented at the AAS meeting and submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (preprint here), his coauthor Bradley Schaefer (Louisiana State University) argues that the supernova resulted when two white dwarf stars collided, leaving an extremely energetic “zombie” star behind.
Amateur astronomer (and Fesen’s second coauthor) Dana Patchick discovered the nebula in August 2013 in archived images from NASA’s Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The infrared images didn’t show much detail, though. Originally, Patchick believed he had found a planetary nebula — his 30th find, hence the name Pa 30 — but later spectroscopic observations revealed that it’s more likely to be a supernova remnant. However, the nebula doesn’t produce many radio or X-ray waves, and there’s no neutron star or black hole in its center. Instead, the central star (sometimes known as Parker’s Star, after University of Hong Kong astronomer Quentin Parker who first studied its spectrum) turns out to be a peculiar white dwarf.
Still, astronomers are now confident about its relation with SN1181, a zero-magnitude supernova that appeared in northern Cassiopeia on August 6th of 1181 AD. Chinese and Japanese observers recorded this “guest star” slowly fading over a period of six months.
In the 1970s, astronomers speculated that supernova remnant 3C58 and the associated pulsar PSR J0205+6449 were the most likely remains of the 12th-century blast. However, says Schaefer, later research showed that 3C58 is much too old. Also, the sky position doesn’t match the Chinese observations. Pa 30 fits the bill on all accounts, according to a 2021 study by Andreas Ritter (University of Hong Kong), Parker, and their colleagues. In particular, the measured expansion velocity of the nebula — some 11,000 kilometers per second — puts its age at 850 years old.
Then again, says Schaefer, the central white dwarf star is “a whacko weird thing.” Its surface temperature is some 200,000 kelvin; it shines at 130 times the luminosity of the Sun, and it is fading quite rapidly, by 1.7 magnitudes over the past century. Most remarkably, it produces an unprecedentedly speedy stellar wind that travels outward at 16,000 kilometers per second, or 5% the speed of light.
“It’s insane,” Fesen says. “Stars simply don’t have 16,000 km/s winds. Even giant, luminous Wolf-Rayet stars have winds at a few thousand km/s at most.” So what peculiar kind of supernova might explain all this?
Fesen’s new observations of Pa 30, obtained in the light of ionized sulfur and revealing much more detail than infrared or visible-light broadband images, contain the last piece in the puzzle of SN1181. Despite the nebula’s distance of almost 8,000 light-years, the image shows intriguing radial filaments, presumably produced when the fierce stellar wind erodes away small clumps of lower-velocity gas ejected by the explosion. AAS media fellow Ben Cassese, who just happened to be in the control room of the telescope when the observations were carried out, vividly remembers Fesen’s excitement that night. “Even the raw data clearly showed the remarkable pattern,” he says.
According to the 2021 paper by Ritter and his colleagues, SN1181 was a low-luminosity supernova of the rare type Iax. While “normal” Type Ia supernovae result from the catastrophic detonation of a white dwarf star, in less luminous Type Iax supernovae the exploding star somehow survives.
Theorists have come up with various scenarios to explain Iax explosions. Some of these predict the existence of a matter-donating companion star; however in the case of Parker’s Star, detailed observations by NASA’s TESS observatory indicate that it’s single. According to Schaefer, only one model matches the observations of Pa 30 and its “whacko weird” central star: the collision of two white dwarfs, one of which consists mainly of carbon and oxygen and the other of oxygen and neon.
Jacco Vink (University of Amsterdam), an expert on supernova remnants who was not involved in these studies, agrees. “It’s great that they have identified a remnant” for SN1181, he says, “especially since it is from a type of supernova that is not yet completely understood.”
Future observations of the intriguing remnant and the “zombie star” at its core will shed more light on this rare and peculiar type of supernova explosion. Fesen has already applied for observing time on both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. “The JWST image will be simply amazing,” he says. “It would make for a great 4th of July image.”
