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How the dance of death stars puts a new spin on the way suns are born

How the dance of death stars puts a new spin on the way suns are born

The Star01-07-2025
Some stars nearing the end of their lives slow their spin in a 'retirement solo' that not only shows the end is nigh but also how others are born.
Chinese astronomers have used this cosmic dance to look into the Milky Way's past and find that stars born today spin much faster than those formed billions of years ago.
Using data from Europe's Gaia space telescope and other sky surveys, researchers at the Changchun Observatory in northeastern China studied thousands of stars, each with a mass roughly 1½ times that of the sun.
They found that as the Milky Way evolved, newly formed stars began spinning up to 10 times faster than their much older counterparts. That extra spin causes gas clouds to break into smaller fragments, making it harder for massive stars to take shape.
The study, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, presents the first direct evidence that the galaxy's star-forming clouds have grown more turbulent over time.
'Our study shows that the angular momentum of stars in a certain mass range holds key clues to the Milky Way's history,' the team said in a statement on the observatory's website. 'It offers a new way to study how the galaxy has changed over time.'
This shift in the star-forming environment could also reshape our galaxy, gradually favouring the birth of smaller, long-lived stars, while massive stars – and the explosive supernovae they trigger – could become rarer.
Scientists have long relied on a star's chemical make-up, age, and motion to see back into the Milky Way's past.
Stars are born spinning, and how fast they spin depends on the conditions in the clouds that formed them.
Many stars slow down as they age. For instance, when the sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago, it likely took less than 10 days to complete a rotation.
Today, it rotates once every 25 days at the equator. By the time it runs out of fuel and expands into a red giant, it will turn thousands of times more slowly and possibly take centuries to complete one spin.
In the new study, the researchers from Changchun focused on stars between 1.4 and 1.8 times the sun's mass. Unlike the sun, these heavier stars hold on to much of their original spin for billions of years.
Near the end of their lives, these stars expand dramatically. As their size increases, their spin slows.
'It's much like a ballerina extending her arms to slow down as she spins,' the team said, dubbing this final slowdown the star's 'retirement solo'.
By using precise measurements from the Gaia mission, the team compared the angular momentum of thousands of such stars of various ages and found a striking pattern: younger stars spin much faster than older ones – not because the older stars slow down, but because they were born that way.
The finding suggests that the Milky Way's star-forming environment has steadily grown more turbulent and energetic over the past 6 billion years, spinning up new stars with each generation.
The team hopes future studies will refine models of how young stars develop just before they ignite.
They also call for more data on stars with a wider range of chemical compositions, which could help reveal how different types of stars gain or lose spin during formation. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
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METiS Technologies Showcases AI-Powered Nanodelivery Platform at the 2025 Controlled Release Society Annual Meeting
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METiS Technologies Showcases AI-Powered Nanodelivery Platform at the 2025 Controlled Release Society Annual Meeting

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Astronomers spot hidden companion star orbiting blazing Betelgeuse
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Astronomers spot hidden companion star orbiting blazing Betelgeuse

PARIS, July 22 — Since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians, people across the world have gazed up in awe at Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars blazing in the night sky. Now astronomers have discovered that this red supergiant, known to many as the hunter's shoulder in the Orion constellation, is being orbited by a much smaller companion star, a study said on Monday. It is not the first time Betelgeuse has surprised stargazers. Seemingly out of nowhere, the giant star dramatically dimmed for five months between 2019 and 2020, leading some scientists to suggest it could soon die in an epic supernova explosion. Further observations revealed that this event — known as the 'Great Dimming' — was actually caused by material ejected from the surface that cooled part of the star, creating a dust cloud that blocked its light. But scientists could still not explain why Betelgeuse's brightness changes regularly, both on a 400-day cycle and another that lasts nearly six years. In a paper titled 'A Buddy for Betelgeuse' published in December, some researchers theorised that the longer variation could be caused by a hidden small star orbiting the behemoth. Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii have now discovered this elusive companion, according to a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Little buddy This companion has a mass around 1.5 times greater than our Sun, the research estimated. That means it is dwarfed by Betelgeuse, which is 1,000 times bigger than the Sun. The companion star is around four times the distance from Betelgeuse as the Earth is from the Sun, which is quite close for a stellar companion. The discovery is the first time such a close companion star has been detected orbiting a supergiant, according to a statement from the US research centre NOIRLab, which operates the Gemini Observatory. Betelgeuse is more than 10,000 times brighter than the Sun, its blinding light making spotting anything nearby difficult. Steve Howell, a Nasa scientist who led the research team, said previous 'papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it'. However the Gemini North telescope was able to spot the much smaller, dimmer star using a technique called speckle imaging. This involves assembling many images taken with short exposure times to overcome the distortions that Earth's atmosphere causes ground-bound telescopes. According to Greek myth, the giant hunter Orion claimed he would kill all the world's beasts, so Earth goddess Gaia sent a scorpion to kill him. God king Zeus then turned both Orion and the scorpion — Scorpius — into constellations. Earlier, ancient Egyptians included Betelgeuse in the constellation Osiris, their god of the dead. Even earlier, research has suggested that Indigenous Australians included Betelgeuse in their own constellations — and had noticed the star's varying brightness. — AFP

Can a superalloy method fix aircraft engine woes, even for sixth-gen fighters?
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time2 days ago

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Can a superalloy method fix aircraft engine woes, even for sixth-gen fighters?

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