Study Unravels Mystery of Double Star (but why does black hole reject mass

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-black-hole,1,7079519.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

Study Unravels Mystery of Double Star
By PAUL RECER Associated Press Writer

5:31 AM PST, January 6, 2004

ATLANTA — Gas from a massive star is being stripped by a black hole and turned into high-speed jets that streak into space at slightly less than the speed of light, according to a new study of a bizarre double-star object.

Astronomers have been fascinated and puzzled by the object, called SS433, for 26 years because it is expelling streams of particles at more than 48,000 miles a second -- a quarter of the speed of light. That's far faster than any velocities seen near other objects in the Milky Way.

SS433 is a pair of stars which orbit a bright disk 16,000 light years away in the constellation Aquila. Light from the central disc is dimmed every 13 days, suggesting a star was orbiting the disc and briefly blocking the light. Glare from the central disc prevented astronomers from analyzing the eclipsing star.

An astronomy team from Georgia State University announced Monday at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society that they have solved part of the mystery of SS433 by capturing and analyzing light for the first time from the dim eclipsing star.

Douglas R. Gies of Georgia State said the eclipsing star is a supergiant that may be 11 times more massive than the sun. He said the star is whipping around a black hole in the center of the disc and the gravitational force from the black hole is stripping gas away from the start at a rate that would consume the entire sun in just 10,000 years.

"The black hole is unable to digest all of the gas and it is then ejected at incredible speeds into these jets," Gies said. <snip>

[GOPFighter]

1. Huh?

"Gas from a massive star is being stripped by a black hole and turned into high-speed jets that streak into space at slightly less than the speed of light..."

"...because it is expelling streams of particles at more than 48,000 miles a second -- a quarter of the speed of light."

I find it strange that the writer would describe "a quarter of the speed of light" as "slightly less than then speed of light"!

[papau]

2. and Hawkin's QM black hole ring gas ejection does not explain this!

It is a neat puzzle!

[On the Road]

3. Sounds Like They HAVEN'T Unraveled It

at least not yet. I first thought of Stephen Hawking's black hole = white hole idea, which involved some ejection of particles, but apparently that's not what's happening here.

The sun is being stripped of its material so fast that it will only last 10,000 years. Could the amount of material be so great that it would cause a bottleneck of some kind? For the particles to be ejected with such speed, it sounds that they must have started to be sucked into the black hole first in order to achieve the velocity.

Other spinning objects expel high-speed streams from the poles, but they're not black holes and do not trap all the particles. If there's too much gas to fit into the disk around the black hole's equator, maybe it's gravitating to the poles and then being ejected.

Or maybe a more exotic explanation is required, like a concentration of the dark anti-gravity force. Who knows? I'm just trying to think about what they said. I love these kinds of articles.

[hatrack]

4. Mind-bending post

Very interesting article - thanks, Papau!

[cprise]

5. Here is how I understand it

Not all the matter sucked off the star has the same angular momentum. The differences in angular momentum result in matter colliding within the disc, thus losing energy (and a.g. overall) but not all of the differences. As matter nears the event horizon, a small fraction of the disk's colliding matter will be released in different directions and some of that will be toward the poles where the event horizon doesn't extend quite as far (this is an effect of the hole's spin). The more energetic of this matter will skirt near the event horizon until it reaches a pole, the gravity lowers and the matter escapes.

[papau]

6. That is "classical" QM - THIS has too much being rejected

I do love these black hole problems -

:-)

[On the Road]

8. I Didn't See a Reference to How MUCH Matter is Being Ejected

Did you conclude that from the fact that's there's enough matter to be detected from earth?

[papau]

9. No - The paper summary said that it was too much - and I am too old to

disagree with these very smart 45 year old kids!

:-)

:toast:

[DarkSim]

7. These black hole problems are always interesting.

I'm going to ask my physics professor about this. If my prof. was smart enough to write a thesis on this he'll be able to answer this.

ill update once i find an answer.