Merged Tabby's Star / One Scary Star

Puppycow said:
I think something weird must be going on with the star itself, not something blocking the light.
Click to expand...

That's my (non-expert) suspicion too. I wonder if there's something strange about the formation or composition of the star which has thrown in off the normal stellar evolution path.
 
Ziggurat said:
That's my (non-expert) suspicion too. I wonder if there's something strange about the formation or composition of the star which has thrown in off the normal stellar evolution path.
Click to expand...

If there is something strange about the star why is it not seen with other stars?
 
Whatever is going on there seems like it must be unique or at least very rare, since we've seen nothing like it anywhere else. Intelligent engineers are probably rare, but probably so are a number of other things that we just haven't thought of yet.
 
I wonder what the effect would be of a miniature black hole within the star? That would be absorbing the star reducing its ability to produce light. It might not have settled down at the centre yet, so its effects might not be predictable.
 
rjh01 said:
I wonder what the effect would be of a miniature black hole within the star? That would be absorbing the star reducing its ability to produce light. It might not have settled down at the centre yet, so its effects might not be predictable.
Click to expand...

How mini are you talking here?

If it's on the order of stellar mass (even 1 solar mass), its event horizon will be small, but its gravitational effects even well beyond the horizon will not. It's going to rip the star apart in short order, with fantastic fireworks along the way. If it's much smaller in mass than the star, then there are other problems. The first of which is that, absent forming that black hole in close proximity to the star (in which case, why isn't it just orbiting harmlessly?), it's going to basically fall at the star at around escape velocity. It's going to be so much denser than the star (and the smaller it is, the denser it is, using the event horizon as its size) that I would expect it to basically just punch a hole through the star and keep on flying out the other side, never to return.
 
Ziggurat said:
How mini are you talking here?

If it's on the order of stellar mass (even 1 solar mass), its event horizon will be small, but its gravitational effects even well beyond the horizon will not. It's going to rip the star apart in short order, with fantastic fireworks along the way. If it's much smaller in mass than the star, then there are other problems. The first of which is that, absent forming that black hole in close proximity to the star (in which case, why isn't it just orbiting harmlessly?), it's going to basically fall at the star at around escape velocity. It's going to be so much denser than the star (and the smaller it is, the denser it is, using the event horizon as its size) that I would expect it to basically just punch a hole through the star and keep on flying out the other side, never to return.
Click to expand...

I am thinking
1. It is a very small black hole, much smaller than a star's mass. Maybe the physical size of a proton.
2. It is already inside the sun. As you say it probably could orbit there for a long time.
3. We failed to detect the x-rays generated when it hit the sun because the x-rays hit the earth before there were x-ray telescopes.

Issues
1. Black holes that small have never been proven to exist. Though some theories say they should be formed from the big bang.
2. Not sure how it could slow down enough to be in orbit inside the sun. It might have hit the sun just enough to send it into an extremely long elliptical orbit around the sun. At the second orbit this orbit would have severely reduced in size.
 
rjh01 said:
1. It is a very small black hole, much smaller than a star's mass. Maybe the physical size of a proton.
Click to expand...
A black hole at the physical size of a proton will only have the gravitational influence of a proton, which is very little, and it will not inconvenience the host star at all. Besides, the Hawking radiation should make it disappear eventually. (I assume you mean mass of a proton; an event horizon of the actual physical size of a proton will still not have a lot of mass compared to the star, but I cannot say how much).
 
The Hawking Radiation evaporation time for a plank mass black hole is 8.671x10-40 seconds. That's pretty short to be having much effect on a star, and the plank mass is a hell of a lot higher than the mass of a proton.

That could be balanced out by absorption, but it's not going to absorb much of the star: it's still only got the gravitational pull of a mote of dust, basically unmeasurable, unless something actually bumps into it.
 
Rincewind said:
It's Malbec's aliens siphoning stuff off, every so often!
Click to expand...

Nope. As predicted by JeffreyW it is a star turning into a planet. Now all it has to do is travel interstellar distances, find a young star, adjust it's speed and trajectory and park itself into the orbit closest to the new sun and ensure all the older star/planets adjust their orbit accordingly. Simple as pi.
 
if a planet was spiraling in and gets to roche's limit
it would be broken in to globs of dust before it impacts the star
and those globs would be in irregular close orbit around the star
while that would be a short lived event on a stars life time
it could result in the effects we see currently
 
nota said:
if a planet was spiraling in and gets to roche's limit
it would be broken in to globs of dust before it impacts the star
and those globs would be in irregular close orbit around the star
while that would be a short lived event on a stars life time
it could result in the effects we see currently
Click to expand...

No, it would show up on infra-red. Whatever is blocking the light from this star is, it does not show up on infra-red. It intercepts light from the star, but does not absorb the light and re-emit is as heat.
 
crescent said:
Whatever is blocking the light from this star is, it does not show up on infra-red.
Click to expand...

That's if something is blocking the light, rather than something making the light output of the star vary. Not that a planet breaking up would do that, and not that we have any idea of what might make the star's output fluctuate so much, but since the whole thing is a mystery, we shouldn't assume that it has to be absorption.
 
crescent said:
No, it would show up on infra-red. Whatever is blocking the light from this star is, it does not show up on infra-red. It intercepts light from the star, but does not absorb the light and re-emit is as heat.
Click to expand...

Only if it's had time to reach thermal equilibrium. But yeah, that time scale is short enough that: A) We'd have to be damn lucky to observe something before it reached thermal equilibrium
B) The observations on Tabby's star have lasted longer than it would take.

So I honestly shouldn't even be posting this, but I've already written it so, anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom