Steve Hentges
No, it’s too small for that! The Sun would need to be about 20 times more massive to end its life as a black hole. Stars that are born this size or larger can explode into a supernova at the end of their lifetimes before collapsing back into a black hole, an object with a grav...
Doubleneutron star(DNS) systems in tight orbits are fantastic laboratories to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The first such DNS system, commonly known as Hulse-Taylor binarypulsar, provided the first indirect evidence of the existence ofgravitational wavesand the impetus to buildLIGO....
What are dead stars called? Bottom line: White dwarfs are the remnants of dead stars. They are the dense stellar cores left behind after a star has exhausted its fuel supply and blown its gases into space. What does a dying star sound like? “You can think of it as hearing the star ...
We now know that stars are fueled by nuclear fusion. Each time fusion takes place, energy is released as a by-product. This energy, expelled into space, is what we see as starlight. The fusion process begins when two hydrogen nuclei smash together to form a particle called the deuteron ...
Why is deuterium called heavy hydrogen? When deuterium and tritium fuse together to form an atom of helium, a neutron, and a bunch of energy, why does most of the energy go with the neutron? Why is uranium-235 used instead of uranium-238 in nuclear reactors?
Why do supergiant stars, such as Betelgeuse, have high luminosity? Why is a star called a star? Why are spiral galaxies so bright? Why are there no stars on pictures of the man on the moon? Why are colors produced in planetary nebulae?
Scientists are waiting to detect crashes of neutron stars, which many thought would be the first collision to be heard. Article content Other types of gravitational detectors are being built including one in India. Article content The European Space Agency is planning a multibillion-dollar probe to...
Without that cooperation, Giaime said, “we wouldn’t have known the sky position of the pair of neutron stars accurately enough to point telescopes at it soon enough.” Of course, epistemic dependence also has its downsides. Consider the costs of turnover within organizations. If someone who...
Gravitational waves are transverse waves produced by accelerating matter. The effect they have on matter is to alternately compress it in one direction and then the other. This is called a quadrupolar wave, and it is why the LIGO detectors have an L shape. ...