Wow! That’s pretty cool.



Star shooting intense water jets into space spotted by Herschel Telescope.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/1 ... 79211.html

Great!

What will be even more incredible will be if space shoots back!

We already know stars can shoot. One was prez of the NRA.

Galactic equivalent of, "Hey you kids, get off my lawn!"

This is fascinating! To me, this confirms that life exists for certain elsewhere in the Universe; maybe even another habitable planet.

Think we could ship the Teabaggers there?

Is that star pissing on passersby?

Why would you want to ruin a perfectly good planet? Anyway, this shows why we have water. If this star is acting normally, Sun-like stars actually blast their environs with water, explaining why planets like ours actually have liquid oceans. I have always wondered where water originated.

Yep. I always thought the theory about comets crashing into our planet and bringing water to it was.....weird. I've also heard the theory that our planet was a gaseous planet at one time, instead of a rock planet, which is where the water came from. Gaseous planets are usually farther away from the sun star; at least in our galaxy.

High, the existence of roasters have challenged this belief.

Thanks Hektor! I hadn't heard about roasters. I still have a hard time believing our planet was once a gaseous planet, but IANAA, so I could be wrong.

So, too, has the existence of roosters.

Must be really hot water. Great photo.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out the physics of this star (not that I have any special qualifications to do that). Water jets in space? Is this a photo of massive clouds of superheated steam? How is that reaction between hydrogen and oxygen occurring as a product of a fusion reactor? Clearly, I need to read more, and solar physicists may need to write a bit more. However, I will be slightly surprised if the caption of this photo five years from now is still "STAR-SHOOTING-WATER."

I suspect it's hydrogen and oxygen that are being expelled. (Probably with a lot of other elements.) And I suspect the jets could be also described as hydrogen peroxide. But water sure makes it more interesting and grabs attention. Such as ours. Res ipsa loquitur.

I read the original paper the news articles are based on. There's a lot in there I didn't understand, but I'm familiar enough with physics and astronomy to pick out a few key points:

-This is apparently not an unexpected finding. There are references to a couple of papers (including one from 1991) that referred to the possibility. Water has apparently also been seen before in outflowing gas near other young stars.

-Water has specifically been detected - not just a lot of hydrogen near oxygen, or hydrogen peroxide.

-There are other components besides water in the jets, and water is not the primary component.

Oooh, I love convergence.

Roaster Roosters

And conflation.


Sorta.

More interesting outer space stuff with pretty pictures



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won't be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday.
That is definitely not the norm for gamma ray bursts, energetic blasts that typically flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, often the sign of the death throes of a collapsing star.
"This is truly different from any explosive event we have seen before," said Joshua Bloom of the University of California-Berkeley, a co-author of research on the blast published in the journal Science.
Initially spied on March 28 by NASA's Swift spacecraft, which is trolling the universe for gamma ray bursts, this particular flash has lasted more than two months and is still going on, Bloom said in a telephone interview.


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/20/b ... ray-flash/

Izzat a black hole the black ball is sinking into?