# Tag Info

40

Describing the sun as an average star is probably more of a reaction against the idea that there is something unique about it. Obviously there is for us, since it is the star that we happen to be in orbit around, and much closer to than any other star, and hence historically the sun has been considered rather unique. But over the centuries we've discovered ...

19

The heavier-than-iron elements are not formed during stellar fusion, but they are formed during supernovae. Then the oldest stars cannot have these heavier elements, but new generations, formed from 'recycled' material of other stars that went supernova can. See Stellar populations . There are heavier that iron elements on Earth, the Earth was formed from ...

18

It is a myth that heavier elements than iron are not produced in stars, slow-neutron-capture-process is a nucleosynthesis process that occurs at relatively low neutron density and intermediate temperature conditions in large stars. For details of what elements are produced and about the process itself, see S-process.

12

Why is the Sun called an “average star”? The sun is a yellow dwarf star and dwarf stars are the most common in the universe. Technically, the sun's spectrum peaks in the range of green light, but we see it as effectively white. I am inclined to think if an astronomer or physicist told you the sun was "average" it is because it is part of the main ...

11

The broadening of emission lines is not due to something that is happening to each individual star, but rather something that affects the whole population. As stars in a galaxy get older, their orbits change relative to the orbits of other stars of the same age. Most relevant for the discussion here, the "velocity dispersion" of a stellar population ...

11

The star that is studied in the paper that you refer to is a very old, very metal-poor "Uranium giant". This is an evolved star with a very deep convective envelope. The Uranium and Thorium that are seen in the atmosphere of the star were not produced in the star. They would have been produced, via the r-process neutron capture mechanism, in the supernova ...

11

As a followup to @honeste_vivere's note about the H-R diagram, our sun really is living in the middle of average-town: The image, from Wikipedia plots 22,000 stars. When you plot a star's temperature vs brightness, they seem to follow certain patterns. Our star lies right in the middle of the boring main sequence.

7

The Sun is decidedly NOT an average star, except it is on the hydrogen-burning main sequence, where $\sim 90$% of stars in the local stellar population are found. A much better appreciation of the Sun's "averageness" is gained from looking at a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (luminosity vs effective temperature or equivalently, absolute magnitude versus colour)...

5

Whether the dark energy is constant or not will ultimately be determined by experiment. At the moment there is no evidence that the dark energy is changing, but the experimental errors are still quite large so a change is not ruled out. There are lots of papers on this subject, but as yet no firm conclusions. It is important to be clear that dark energy ...

5

Cosmic Rays are most often high-energy particles, mostly protons and alpha particles accelerated to high velocities by cosmic magnetic fields. They do not show up in the microwave wavelength range that comprise the CMB. As @ACuriousMind says in the comment, there is contamination in the CMB, but this is mainly due to Galactic dust and Bremsstrahlung from ...

4

Good numbers for this have only been coming out for a decade or so, so its a relatively new topic. There does seem to be a strong tendency for dwarf and satellite galaxies to have much lower mass-to-light ratios, and correspondingly smaller baryon-to-DM ratios. See, for example, Stringer+2009, Strigari+2008. These observations are backed up by simulations ...

4

The apparent line-of-sight velocity (red shift / blue shift) is $v\cos\theta$ where $\theta$ is the angle between the plane of the stars' orbits and the line-of-sight line from the Earth. If the stars eclipse one another at a certain point in their orbit (eclipsing binaries) then we know that the Earth is in their orbital plane, so $\theta=0$ and the ...

3

In general, yes you need to know the orbital inclination angle $i$ in order to fully solve the orbit. The radial velocity amplitude $K$ is just modified to $K \sin i$ (where $i=0$ is a face-on orbit). Combining this with the orbital period and Keplerian orbits gives you the "mass function" $$\frac{M_1^3 \sin^3 i}{\left(M_1 + M_2\right)^2} = \frac{K_{2}^3 \... 3 The progenitor bias arises in attempts to study early-type (elliptical) galaxies at higher redshift. The desire is to choose a sample of galaxies at high z that are the analogs of the galaxies that evolved to form the low z sample. The bias arises if one chooses a sample of only early-types at high z. Because some late-types eventually evolve into ... 3 Well yes, maybe, but they are called planets. So fission in stars? No, but maybe in planets. I do not know what the status of this is, but the core of the Earth is heated by weak and maybe strong nuclear processes. The standard model is that weak nuclear decay. The major heat-producing isotopes within Earth are potassium-40, uranium-238, uranium-235, and ... 2 Not directly, because these two quantities are not known to correlate as strongly as other "intermediate" relations. But they do correlate, with bigger disks in bigger haloes; it's fairly intuitive. You could construct a relation from e.g. The Luminosity-Size and Mass-Size Relations of Galaxies out to z ~ 3 (or more specific to B-band, but more simulation ... 2 Apart from the heating due to sound absorption, as per the comment by HolgerFiedler, I don't think you will find a mechanism that can radiate due to polarization effects in the medium. Any EM radiation would be at the frequency of your acoustic waves. With the difference between the speed of sound and the speed of light, that would be very-long-wave ... 2 Well, first of all, that's not the NFW profile, instead you should have:$$\rho(r) = \frac{\rho_0}{\frac{r}{r_s}(1+\frac{r}{r_s})^2}$$The radius r_s is usually called the scale radius, and is the place where the logarithmic derivative of the density is -2. This isn't especially physically meaningful, but is mathematically convenient. The integral is ... 1 The key statement is that the a_{\ell,m} are independent Gaussian random variables. For each \ell, there are 2\ell+1 of them. So their sum is, essentially by definition, a chi-squared distribution with 2\ell+1 degrees of freedom. Now, it is a known fact that the variance of a chi-squared distribution with k degrees of freedom is just 2k, so ... 1 In principle there is no upper limit to the size of objects that can be gravitationally bound. In practice the largest gravitationally bound objects are galaxy superclusters, which have sizes up to around 100 million light-years. The formation of anything bigger than this has been prevented by the expansion of the universe. From your question I'd guess you ... 1 The gravitational force is always attractive (and never repulsive) so the extra mass cannot be expelled by gravity. From a classical newtonian point of view the magnitude of the gravitational force between two masses is given by the following equation:$$ \mathbf{F} = -G \frac{m_1m_2}{\left|\mathbf{r_{12}}\right|^2}\mathbf{\hat{r}_{12}} So you can see ...

1

It is highly unlikely. Neutrinos are known to account for a small part. The problem with neutrinos is that they are low mass and usually highly relativistic. DM needs to be made up of particles or objects that are slow and non relativistic. DM concentrates around galaxies, and tends to stay around, DM needs to be cold to stay around. As for cosmic rays it'...

1

On top of the other excellent answers I'd like to point out that the accretion rate of dark matter particles is believed to be much smaller. The reason matter in accretion disk is being accreted rapidly is because they lose energy from electromagnetic radiation. For dark matter particles, in practice the only way it can be accreted is if the particle ...

1

A 2013 paper by Shtanov and Sahni (already mentioned by Ben Crowell in the comments) says that the modes grow exponentially in conformal coordinates, and Barrow et al overlooked the fact that the conformal time changes very little during and after inflation. A 2014 preprint by Tsagas, one of the authors of the original paper, cites Shtanov and Sahni and ...

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