Stars, stars they're hottest to boot, the more they heat the more they toot, the more
they toot the better the appeal -- except when the stellar mass is so high that it burns
our planet to a cinder.
sunspots Stars are the building blocks of the universe,
galaxies are made of them, and each create their own solar systems.
I titled this to be consistent with other science publications, but when people talk
about "weighing" a star, I die a little.
Weight is the measure of gravity's pull on our mass -- it's relative; on different places
on Earth or on different planets, our weight changes relative to gravitation.
So, obviously, you can't really weigh a star… but you CAN determine how much matter is inside
which can tell you a star's life story!
I spoke to Dr. Natalie Hinkel, the co-director of NASA's NExSS (Nexus for Exoplanet System
Science).
(She measures stars for a living), and she told DNews, "The smaller the star, the dimmer
it tends to be but also the longer it lives.
The bigger the star, the brighter it will shine,… but the shorter it will live.
If a star is big, the Habitable Zone is much further away from the star; if a star is small,
the Habitable Zone is closer to the star."
Before we can understand the planets that might orbit a star, we have to understand
the star itself, and THAT starts with looking at solar mass!
So, measuring solar mass can tell scientists massive amounts of data about what kind of
star it is, it's potential lifespan, when it was born, whether it can have planets,
and even what kind of planets might be in orbit!
Because we know the most about it, astronomers pegged our personal star "the sun," at one
"solar mass" unit!
// We're number 1!
Literally!
we're number 1!
// Big stars like blue giants, supergiants and hypergiants can be hundreds of solar masses
and, according to Universe Today, can give off 66,000 times the energy of our sun!
This means any exoplanet system would be COMPLETELY alien to our experience.
By studying stars we know ours is actually pretty small for a white star -- any smaller,
and they dim and turn red.
You can even have a star that is point-075 of our solar mass, or about 80 times larger
than Jupiter… that would be a brown dwarf, the only thing that keeps those stars hot
is the friction of their own gravitational collapse.
Sad.
There are two main ways to "weigh" a star.
Ugh.
One works if you know there's a planet there, so for most stars, that's out.
The other works for binary stars -- two stars that orbit each other.
By meshing Kepler's laws of orbital mechanics and Newton's laws of gravity astronomers can
measure the mass of incandescent gas in these giant nuclear furnaces.
It's complicated, but essentially they watch the stars move over days or months and, measure
their luminosity -- or light emitted, orbital period, and velocity to determine their mass.
This doesn't always work, because not all stars are binary -- obviously, like ours…
But now, a new study in October 2015's Science Advances, found a way to measure solar masses
of some these lonely stars -- by using pulses of nuclear energy!
A pulsar, is a kind of star which emits a "rotating beam of electromagnetic radiation
which can be detected when the beam sweeps past Earth" almost like a galactic lighthouse.
These beams are so steady you could almost mark time to them, but sometimes, in young
pulsars, they "glitch."
Using these glitches, and the mathematics of nuclear physics and superfluids -- which
I don't entirely understand -- researchers can determine the mass of a star.
Damn girl!
This expands our knowledge of the universe even further!
Dr. Hinkel told me, "In the field of exoplanet exploration, it is often said that you cannot
learn about the planet until you understand the host star."
If you know the mass of a star, you can understand its physical properties, and then, through
observation determine if it has a planet.
From there, we sometimes can learn the mass of that planet, the size, and sometimes, if
the planet passes in front of the star, what atmosphere it had, and the properties of the
planet too.
Without the stellar mass, none of this would be possible.
Stars are like ogres, er… onions… they have layers.
Once they've burned through their fuel (hydrogen) and converted into other elements (like helium
or carbon), they'll stop shining and eventually die in a supernova explosion.
That supernova combines those heavier elements together and throws them out into the universe…
Eventually, those elements become Earth… plants… and us.
All heavy elements originated either in stars or in their supernovae and understanding the
matter inside stars, and how that can vary, helps us understand our universe, and even
to some extent ourselves.
By trying to understand how solar matter works, we're looking billions of years into the past
to understand a bit about ourselves too.
[[YT]] If this broke your mind a little, that's okay.
I like to do that occasionally.
And if you love science as much as we do, you could come join us at the Bay Area Science
Festival!
We're putting on our very first LIVE SHOW.
ON STAGE at the Castro Theater!
We're going to have DNews favs Amy Shira Teitel, Dr. Crystal Dilworth, plus illusionist Brian
Brushwood, biologists Dr. Joe Hanson and Dr. Carin Bondar will be there…
seriously it's going to be a nice of nerdy nerdy goodness.
Grab a ticket in the link below and come join us on October 22 here in San Francisco!!!
I'm SO EXCITED.
If you have questions for Dr. Hinkel, find her on Twitter at Natalie_Hinkel, and ask
her about stars.
Anything else you want to know about space?
Tell me in the comments.