John Carlos Baez on Nostr: I don't really know why people study astronomy in such great detail - except that ...
I don't really know why people study astronomy in such great detail - except that it's fun. I think it's important to understand how the universe as we know it began about 14 billion years ago, and understand how the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and how evolution brought us here. My life fits into this frame. But is important to know the various dramatic ways that stars can die?
I don't think so... but it's sure fun!
Here's a tiny white dwarf star called a 'polar' sucking hot gas from its much larger companion. What makes it a 'polar' is its intense magnetic field - so strong that the gas falling in is forced to move along the field lines, rather than forming the usual pancake-shaped 'accretion disk'.
This means the ionized gas falling onto this white dwarf lands only on its north and south magnetic poles. It's like how ions from the Sun hit our Earth near its poles, producing auroras there. But it's vastly more intense! The magnetic field of a 'polar' is about 100 million times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. And a lot more stuff is falling in. Now and then a *huge* amount.
So, polars are considered 'cataclysmic variable stars': now and then they blast out huge amounts of radiation, as a clump of infalling gas hits their surface. There are different kinds of cataclysmic variable stars. This is just one!
Now, why is it so fun to think about this... instead of, say, politics? I guess the question answers itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_(star)
I don't think so... but it's sure fun!
Here's a tiny white dwarf star called a 'polar' sucking hot gas from its much larger companion. What makes it a 'polar' is its intense magnetic field - so strong that the gas falling in is forced to move along the field lines, rather than forming the usual pancake-shaped 'accretion disk'.
This means the ionized gas falling onto this white dwarf lands only on its north and south magnetic poles. It's like how ions from the Sun hit our Earth near its poles, producing auroras there. But it's vastly more intense! The magnetic field of a 'polar' is about 100 million times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. And a lot more stuff is falling in. Now and then a *huge* amount.
So, polars are considered 'cataclysmic variable stars': now and then they blast out huge amounts of radiation, as a clump of infalling gas hits their surface. There are different kinds of cataclysmic variable stars. This is just one!
Now, why is it so fun to think about this... instead of, say, politics? I guess the question answers itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_(star)