This is why I love Brady's channels - this post comes from an article that Professor Mike was not aware of but that Brady himself had found and given to Mike who found it worth discussing on a post. Love you guys...
@@MrBollocks10 Using the comedic template of one or more unusual things entering a bar, the joke makes a pun based on astronomical white dwarfs being the source of Type Ia supernovae (as explained in the video) and a stereotypical verbal quirk of Canadians (i.e. using the semantically flexible sound "eh" at the end of sentences). _References:_ Chandrasekhar, S. (1935). "The Highly Collapsed Configurations of a Stellar Mass (second paper)". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 95 (3): 207-225. McNelly, Scott. "6". Ultimate Book of Jokes. pp. 92-100. Nosowitz, Dan (January 10, 2017). "Why Do Canadians Say 'Eh'?: The story behind Canada's most distinctive verbal tic". Atlas Obscura. Hope this helps.
One star was destroyed and one star was sent away in accordance with the blueprints for construction of the intergalactic highway system. We apologize for the inconvenience. Any questions or concerns should be directed to HR on planet Vogsphere and remember, resistance is useless.
@@kaizenalive Possibly if you're an alien civilization wishing for the end of your existence, and this random thing rams into your solar system. Ouch man. I wouldnt want to be on the receiving end of this bad boy.
Breaking News: "White Dwarf murders its binary partner with an explosion and runs away from the crime scene! Images of the fugitive caught on telescope!"
*(crime happened about 1400 years ago, and the perpetrator has been traveling at 250km/s in a direct course from the crime-scene ever since). More at 11!
@@sixtysymbols Who is “Tim” in that “unmade podcast”? And why is there no information in the description of it about anybody ... or indeed about anything?
That bit about the star flying off being the one that blew up is weird to me, isn't it more likely that the other one blew up and this one survived the blast?
If there were two white dwarf stars revolving each other, and one of them successfully blew up, then why couldn't the *other* star be the one we're seeing now? It had been chained to a huge gravity-well, and suddenly that gravity-well disappears (producing a shock-wave which would also give a big push to the second star). That would explain why the white star that we do see doesn't have the nickel and iron, if it had been a much younger white dwarf than the star which blew up. ... just curious.
It makes more sense that the runaway white dwarf was the partner of the star that blew up. The increased metal content would be due to the outer layers of the now missing star as it aged. It doesn't make sense that a star would remain intact after it blew up with enough force to 'blow away' it's orbital partner. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you've said, but the fellow on the left basically asked him to repeat the process.
The description of the 'incomplete' explosion makes me wonder if this "damaged" white dwarf would have been the source of a gamma ray burst, and if similar events account for at least some of observed GRBs.
The animation is fantastic, but at the beginning,and again at 9’44,” when the twin system in reciprocal orbits suddenly loses one body in an explosion, the ostensible orphan continues around the former center of gravity for a moment, like a drunk who doesn’t realize his buddy was kicked out of the pub, and then appears itself to explode, as well, yet magically retains a perfect spherical shape even as now-linear momentum sends it careering into oblivion. I realize there was speculation about the initial event obliterating one twin, and a second event involving the orphan twin, like violent sympathetic resonance? or blast-wave recoil trauma? titanic tidal disruptions from the sudden dispersal of gravitational mass? or some other consequential sequelae. But both twins appear again after the first event, like vampires, and the second event is depicted with equally catastrophic visuals, yet leaves no apparent bruises from the fight on the survivor, who is now alone without even the ghost twin, and it all left me scratching my head about the fracas. But maybe I should just be grateful I’m so insignificant in the vastness of a meaningless, endless cosmos?
The video mentioned that the white dwarf remnant is moving in the opposite direction to most things in the Milky Way. Would this mean that it would be feeling some sort of drag that could be slowing it down? And if so, would there be anything to gain from measuring it's deceleration (if possible)?
I used the audio archive at Storyblocks, which is pretty good. They sponsored my podcast this week coincidentally, so use www.storyblocks.com/unmade and I’ll get in their good books!
Professor Mike strikes that perfect blend of information, enthusiasm, and easy to understand explanations that make me love watching any time he's on Sixty. And here's a question...what does this failed/mini-explosion mean for the lifespan of the white dwarf and its future supernova?
White Dwarfs are extremely tough objects. I doubt the nova had any significant impact, other than imparting a lot of velocity, unto the dwarf. We know this because of the nature of white dwarf electron-degenerate matter. Any object that is so dense that the Sun's mass is stuffed into a volume the size of Earth means that dense object is already experiencing tremendous forces/pressures... In fact, these electron-degenerate matter are experiencing forces many times in excess of what the nova hit the dwarf with! Its like pushing on a rock with your breath... maybe you can push the rock but you sure ain't going to crack the rock open with your breath!
Two questions hopefully someone can answer in an easy to understand way. First how is it that the thermonuclear process is able to overcome the gravitational pressure and any other bonds of the stars mass so dramatically in a supernova when it has not been able to do it during the stars entire life, what is the difference in the reaction? Second if a white dwarf reaches the mass needed to go supernova by stripping material off the other star in the binary how did the other star go supernova? Did the first supernova slam a great deal of material into the second star pushing it over the limit or or did the extreme environment of a supernova make a white dwarf go supernova despite not having the mass usually required?
I'm a little late to this party BUT, what happens if the 2 white dwarves are tidally locked and all the material that's being taken from the one winds up in mostly the same spot on the other? Part 2 what happens if the white dwarf that is losing mass loses enough to take it below 0.17 M☉. Does it suddenly pop back from degenerate matter to normal matter and if so what happens to the pair if the pop back makes it expand and make contact with the other white dwarf?
How do they know that THIS white dwarf was the one that underwent the incomplete explosion? How do they know it wasn't the companion that exploded and those heavier elements they're seeing is just shrapnel?
My guess is that if the other white dwarf underwent a complete supernova, then the 'shrapnel' would have contained nickle and iron. Since those elements are missing, some type of incomplete supernova must have accord. I am not sure how the concluded which white dwarf in the pair underwent this incomplete supernova.
How do they know anything for that matter? What if the star that exploded is really the star we're seeing moving through the sky? And the star we're seeing moving through the sky is really the star that exploded? Classic case of mistaken identity. Or identify theft. Or whatever.
@@kindoflame No, I get that it was an incomplete supernova regardless of which star underwent it, I'm just wondering what made them think it was this star that did it.
@@StarkRG I think if it had been the other one to go SN then there would not have been any of the heavier elements. the fact that there are some mean it was this star, the fact that there is no nickel means it was incomplete. I think.
@@mralistair737 Why would it mean that, though? Given how close these stars would likely have been, the cast-off from such an event would most certainly have showered the twin.
What are the chances that this discovery has an impact on our use of type 1A supernovae? Might there be, for instance, a significant-enough-to-check impact on cosmological constant calculations?
This is blasphemous talk in orthodox circles. If your numbers don't align with the church than your methodology must be faulty. Their clergy offer sigmas of the highest order. Everything is as they say and nothing more.
The runaway white dwarf will probably be funneled through the milky way into the central black hole. That is probably what happens to stars that get off course. This process regulates energy and matter in the galaxy and keeps random gravitational influences at a minimum.
I cannot help thinking of a different explanation. What if it was the other white dwarf that went supernova and triggered a partial supernova on the runaway star that we now see. If the 'runaway star' was close to the Chandrasekhar limit but not quite there yet then maybe the added pressure and heat from the shockwave of the first star would be capable of setting of a thermonuclear reaction, but only on one side of the star and due to the insufficient mass the reaction would die out before consuming much of it. It would be enough to mess up the composition but not enough to go through the whole process and create stuff like nickel and iron. In the meantime the other star no loner exists except as a thin expanding cloud of gas.
Assuming it was a binary pair of white dwarf stars with one exploding, how do you know the one flying off was the one that exploded and not the other one. If the exploding star completely disintegrated, that would uncouple the other and it should go rallying off at high speed. Because it didn't undergo explosion it would explain the lack of nickel in its spectrum. Do the authors consider that scenerio?
Very cool, but it wasn't clear to me why this white dwarf wasn't the one being stolen from, and simply had it's gravitational rope cut when the other star exploded. Since it didn't steal the mass and go through the explosion it wouldn't have gone through the fusion events of going nova, wouldn't that explain the absence of nickel and iron?
Something else seems off about this separated binary.. possibly another star collided into the partner, and then sent this one free in the explosion? So could help explain the lack of supernova tell-tale elements? Also, cores of stars, something about them being gaseous doesn't make sense from a materials point of view with all that gravity and forces and pressure? Maybe more like a supercritical-fluid or critically-unstable crystalline solid that turns to supercritical-fluid every decade or so (with regards to the Sun anyway)?
Sounds like everything blew into disparate elements and the direction of travel was determined by the force of all the adjacent enough elements coalescing together.
What are the chances that it was in a trinary system? Two white dwarves siphoning off mass from a third star, one goes supernova and donates supernova remmenants to this white dwarf, leading to the presence of them in this star, and the explosion of the second white dwarf giving it such a velocity? Do we have a mass reading on this star? Is it close to the limit of supernova?
How do you know it's not the other star that exploded so this one was freed from the binary and ended up flying away? You just said it's this one that exploded, but how do we know that? Can the elements present in this star either be the material from the exploded star or transmuted material in this one? Heavier elements would sink into the star but the lighter ones are stuck in between due to pressure...
Could it be a near equal-mass binary under the Shandankar limit and a gravitational merger pushing it above that limit? Spinning binaries/black hole mergers can have asymmetric GW emissions that give the final merged star/black hole a kick to velocities like the one described here.
Is it possible the other star exploded, and the by products was absorbed by the surviving star? Ie, there never was a failed nova, it just got some stuff from the other one that did go nova?
I don't see why the runaway had to be the one that exploded as the explosion would have seeded it with the elements from the other star if that was the one that exploded, so it will have an altered spectra just because it got splashed with the stellar gore from the other one's demise.
That star: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG" *breathes* "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Why does the animation show 2 explosions? What happens to the companion (donor) star after the supernova explosion? Is it destroyed? I can imagine that there must be a huge shock wave and star is pretty much just gas.
Is it possible that white dwarfs have a neutronium core that grows as the white dwarfs gains mass? And the closer it approaches to the chandrasakar limit, the thinner the atomic matter on the surface? As that layer gets thinner the energy barrier between the matter falling onto the star and the neutronium allows progressively more tunneling and more nuclear reactions with the intense gravity of the star acting as a neutron moderator. In other words thermonuclear reactions on the surface ramp up until gravity cannot contain them and they burst out as a type 1a supernova.
A pre-supernova binary system could also have been perturbed by another nearby huge explosion, or gravitational interaction with another massive passing object. Question: Could it also result from the instabilities in a 3-body system? Food for deep thought. Thanks.
So... This one was not as standard of a candle as you would wish... Maybe Type 1a is not always the same brightness? This one should've probable been quite different. I mean, can 1a even be trusted after we've seen this happen?
Anybody else go on a search spiral to find out how fast the Sun is moving through the galaxy, then run the numbers on his 200km/s to find that that star is traveling roughly 100,000km/hr slower than our own Sun but against the cosmic current? I freaking love this stuff. This was a nice scientific detour from the current happenings of the world. Thank goodness science continues.
How much of our understanding of cosmology is built on the idea that type 1a supernovae are always created by the exact same process? I mean, I know we have other tools at our disposal, but my understanding was that that was considered such a fundamental truth that many theories on the scale of larger structures depended on it.
What is the difference between the accretion leading to nova and the accretion leading to SN Ia ? Can we predict the outcome on the basis of the accretion characteristics ?
Your explanation of its velocity does not make sense to me. Even if one member of a binary explodes, its mass surely does not just vanish? Unless a significant proportion of the mass is converted to radiation, it would still exert gravitational pull. Would it be possible to make a more detailed video on how the disintegration of one member of a binary system results in the other member leaving the system at high velocity. It seems there would be a major conservation of momentum problem somewhere.
Yes, the sun orbits at 230km/s, but that's in the normal direction in the galaxy... This white dwarf travels "against the current" so to speak, which is hard to do and a lot of momentum to cancel out from its original motion around the galaxy (which was presumably the normal direction).
@@ronenshtein7083 I wonder what would be the closing velocity of this runaway star if it was on a head on trajectory with our solar system? In normal miles per hour.
Could it have been a dual-white dwarf system? Where one of them fully detonated, while the other one didn't fully detonate and got thrown out before it could fully detonate?
at 2:57 "its pull of gravity becomes stronger" is this really correct? i mean, as i remember it, two objects always excert the same amount of gravitational force on each other > your body actually pulls the earth by the same amount as the earth pulls you - and it comes down to inertia determining which object moves towards the other. am i misinformed here?
What he means is that the first star exerts more force on a piece of matter on the surface of the second star than the second star exerts on that same piece of matter.
But hang on... when the explosion happens, the other star's mass doesn't disappear. So the remaining partner still has to climb out of the gravity well, right? I don't see how their orbital speed has any bearing on the hyperbolic excess velocity.
