VWBB - Capella's Supernova

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- Blackwater Ops (http://volitionwatch.papageorgefamily/vwbb/forumdisplay.php?forumid=8)
-- Capella's Supernova (http://volitionwatch.papageorgefamily/vwbb/showthread.php?threadid=1566)

Posted by George on 11-14-2001 02:14 AM:

Its like pottery because if you aren't careful your pot can collapse and go supernova.

Posted by Shrike on 11-14-2001 03:24 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Turnsky
errr... no red giants are when stars roughly the size of earth's run out of fissionable materials and start to burn out slowly.

Supernovas happen when a really big star's materials react all at once and explode.

Neutron stars happen when a star explodes and then all the widely distributed material from that explosing starts going in again and forms a rather dense object with a very high gravitational force, black holes happen when a neutron star collapses even further in on itself.

Not quite.

Red Giant stars are stars that have moved off the main sequence (which is Hydrogen burning) and begin burning Helium (this is where our Sun would stop, after Helium burning, blowing off the outer layers and forming a white dwarf made up of Carbon, Oxygen and a few other elements) and if the star is massive enough, heavier elements such as Carbon, Oxygen, Neon, etc, right up so Silicon. There's some theorized numbers, and as a little FYI, Silicon -> Iron burning for a 1 solar mass core takes something like half a day but I'll leave that.

Also, I'm not sure how many people know, but a star is in equilibrium between inward pressure (gravity) and outward pressure. (radiation) So if you get less radiation, the core of the star collapses until the pressure is high enough for the next reaction to begin. You may have heard of a 'Helium Flash', that is when Helium burning begins, and this causes a re-equilibration.

So our presupernova star is basically like a giant plasma onion, with a core made of Silicon and concentric shells of progressively lighter elements. Now, each fusion reaction has a threshold pressure-temperature regime, and every time a reaction starts, you get more energy to stave off the collapse of the star, but at ever higher P-T. Now, the thing is, the binding energy of Iron is higher than the energy released from the reaction of 2Si - > Fe. So basically you star Iron burning, and the energy keeping the core of the star from collapsing vanishes. Bang, collapse.

Over about 1/4 of a second or so, the core is in free-fall as it compresses to nucleonic density, and since nucleonic matter is nearly incompressible, it acts like a very stiff spring. This is called core rebound, and is why supernova spew all their outer layers (which could be tens of solar masses) into space. I'm not sure about this, but I believe that this collapse converts gravitational energy to EM energy, which helps power the supernova. The core can be left as a neutron star (if it's over the Chandresekhar limit of ~1.4 solar masses) or collapse unstoppably to a black hole if it's over about 2.5 solar masses or so.

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Posted by Turnsky on 11-14-2001 04:51 AM:

I Stand Corrected Shrike.
Well i did say "i'll try" Didn't i?

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Posted by Shrike on 11-14-2001 06:27 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Turnsky
I Stand Corrected Shrike.
Well i did say "i'll try" Didn't i?

Yeah, I kinda corrected the hell out of that didn't I? Oh well, better to get as much info out there as possible.

Posted by sandwich on 11-15-2001 02:25 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by George
Its like pottery because if you aren't careful your pot can collapse and go supernova.

Not my pot - I only use the highest quality pot... oops.

j/k

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Posted by Shrike on 11-15-2001 10:05 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by sandwich
Not my pot - I only use the highest quality pot... oops. j/k

BC pot?

Posted by sandwich on 11-16-2001 07:21 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Shrike
BC pot?

BC? I don't get the reference...

Posted by Cepheid on 11-18-2001 09:59 PM:

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Posted by Cepheid on 11-18-2001 10:06 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Shrike
Not quite.

The core can be left as a neutron star (if it's over the Chandresekhar limit of ~1.4 solar masses) or collapse unstoppably to a black hole if it's over about 2.5 solar masses or so.

And, if the neutron star is set in rotation, which it often is, you get a pulsar.

Posted by Cepheid on 11-18-2001 10:12 PM:

Also, to add something about black holes, they aren't totally black. They actually glow in gamma radiation because of photons formed from the quantum flux on the outer edge of the event horizon. They gradually lose mass through this "bleeding" until the evaporate in a flash of gamma rays. (I love this stuff.)

Posted by Zeronet on 11-19-2001 08:48 AM:

They do "look" black though.

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Posted by Shrike on 11-19-2001 09:30 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by sandwich
BC? I don't get the reference...

British Columbia, where I live. Where the best pot in North America comes from.

Posted by Zeronet on 11-19-2001 08:04 PM:

Be cool for a campaign if i black hole existed in Capella, more likey it will be a location of lots of subspace nodes leading to many places.

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Posted by George on 11-20-2001 02:47 AM:

The thing about a black hole, its color, is that its black.
And the thing about space, your basic space color, is that its black.
So how are you sposed to see them?
-Holly, Red Dwarf

Posted by Shrike on 11-20-2001 02:51 AM:

Because black holes radiate energy slightly, especially if they have an associated accretion disk.

Posted by Cepheid on 11-20-2001 02:53 AM:

Astronomers usually look for X-rays emitted by the friction within the disk of debris surrounding it.

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