The Milky Way monster
A team of Canadian astronomers at the University of Montreal led by physicist Anthony Moffat has discovered a star whose mass is 100 times bigger than that of the Sun in the southern region of the Milky Way. The biggest discovered star has a mass about 83 times bigger than that of the Sun. The biggest stars are the rarest so this discovery is important.
But there are few things we know about these true giants which have the astounding ability to dispers their matter under the form of solar winds; these solar winds are extremly powerful. The Canadians started this hunt for monsters by directing their telescopes at binary systems where the two stars that form the system gravitate around the same gravity center. They then acted according to the laws Kepler made and tried to estimate the mass of the stars; this assumes studying their trajectories. They were baffled as they found this huge star with an enormous quantity of hydrogen.The star is part of a class of stars named Wolf Rayet; these stars are massive but they often have little hydrogen which means that the powerful solar winds have not ripped the hydrogen layer. This tells us that the star is young. Probably the biggest stars in our universe are a part of this category or at least Anthony Moffat thinks so. He says that he is not going to stop searching the Milky Way; in fact he is going to search The Cloud of Magellan and in these two galaxies he is certain that there is a bigger star just waiting to be found. But the question that rose and has not been answered is what is the mass limit for a star.
For a star to remain coherent it has to have a balance between the gravity which pulls matter into the center and the outside forces which attract the matter. In order to answer this you have to understand the way that stars evolve and how elements are supplied by stars. We are still just begining to understand such things and this journey we have accepted is long and hard but the results are worth it. A milky way map lacks information from some areas but it is being filled by the day.
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October 31st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Wow just imagine, that around that star could be a solar system similar to ours, teeming with life.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:40 pm
This article is so poorly written, I almost believe it’s a bad translation from another language.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
That is amazing. Imagine the possibilities!
October 31st, 2007 at 4:12 pm
The grammar in this report is fucking atrocious.
This shouldn’t be on Digg.
October 31st, 2007 at 4:16 pm
wow u imagined that now?
October 31st, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Time for another round of videos comparing Earth to this star.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Wow. This article was either written by a scientific illiterate, or in a foreign language and badly translated, or by a foreign scientific illiterate and well translated.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Something wrong with this article, Betelgeuse is 630 times the size of our Sun and still not the biggest star around.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:16 am
An Australian must have wrote it.
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:09 pm
John–before you criticize the facts this article, I suggest you reread it carefully–maybe out loud so you can get past your assumptions and actually get to what it says. While Betelgeuse does indeed have a DIAMETER about 600-800 times our Sun, its MASS is only 14 times the Sun. This article clearly refers to stars with a MASS that is 100 times the Sun’s–big difference, and critical to the point of the article. A point you clearly missed.
And Amy….my golly–if you want to slam someone else’s writing, you might want to check your own grasp of grammar first. “Must have WROTE it”??? Give me a break.
November 4th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Oh snap you got served.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Imagine the countless possibilities that could arise from this. What an amazing discovery…
Nora- You’re awesome.
November 7th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Heh yeah the sentence structure is a little stilted but I don’t see anything wrong with the article per se.
November 7th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I can’t really see this star having Earth-like planets orbiting it teeming with life. It is quite clearly pointed out in the article that more massive stars have much more powerful solar winds. Life only survives on this planet because the magnetism of the planet diverts the solar winds. If the Sun had stronger solar winds (as it does when a solar flare happens) then the magnetism wouldn’t be enough to divert it and we’d all die.
As for the possibilities… what possibilities ? We can learn from this discovery but the possibilities seem quite limited to me. Feel free to suggest some but just parroting the phrase “Imagine the possibilities.” doesn’t really add anything to the discussion.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
The grammar is off because the person writing it is most likely French, The University of Montreal is in Quebec after all.
Plus, the facts are a bit off. The largest star known, VY Canis Majoris is 2100 times bigger than the sun, which is bigger than 100 times. Plus, if they’re talking about mass it is also inaccurate because Eta Carinae currently holds 150 Solar Masses.
November 18th, 2007 at 7:01 am
your an idiot for placing this comment
November 20th, 2007 at 9:33 am
where is the southern region of the milky way?