- 4108 - PLANETARY NEBULAE - the future for our sun? Planetary nebulas are clouds of gas that are expelled by dying stars at the end of their lives. These can resemble butterflies or hourglasses with the smoldering remains of the star at their heart.
-------------- 4108 - PLANETARY NEBULAE - the future for our sun?
- The Sun, when it runs out of fuel for
nuclear fusion at its core and after it has swelled out as a red giant and
swallowed the inner planets in around 5 billion years, will leave similar
gaseous remains around a white dwarf star. Our Sun will become a planetary
nebula.
-
- Astronomers know a great deal about
planetary nebulas, but an arrangement of such clouds in the galactic bulge at
the center of our Milky Way galaxy has still been a puzzle since its discovery
in 2013.
-
- Studying 136 planetary nebulas in the
thickest part of the Milky Way, the galactic bulge, with the Very Large
Telescope (VLT), each is unrelated and comes from different stars, which died
at different times and spent their lives in different locations.
-
- The researchers found that the shapes of
these planetary nebulas line up in the sky in the same way. They are also
aligned almost parallel to the plane of the Milky Way.
-
- What wasn't known until now was the fact
that this alignment is only present in the planetary nebulas that have a close
stellar companion. In these cases, the companion stars orbit the stellar
remnant at the heart of the planetary nebulas at a distance closer than our
solar system's innermost planet Mercury is to the sun.
-
- The alignment is absent in planetary
nebulas that lack such a companion star, and this implies that the alignment
could be created as a result of the rapid orbital motion of the companion star,
which may even end up orbiting inside the remains of the main star.
-
- The formation of stars in the bulge of our
galaxy is a complex process that involves various factors such as gravity,
turbulence, and magnetic fields. Until now, we have had a lack of evidence for
which of these mechanisms could be causing this process to happen and
generating this alignment.
-
-
July 31, 2023 4108
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Comments
appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ---
--- Some reviews are
at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback,
corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------
jamesdetrick@comcast.net
------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- ---
Friday, August 4, 2023 ---------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment